
ALONGSHORE 

STEPHEINNREYNOLDS 







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BHrarag 




Class o /A S 'Y 

Book . ~ 

Copyright N° 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT; 



ALONGSHORE 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 

A POOR MAN'S HOUSE 

Crown 8vo. Second Edition. 

THE HOLY MOUNTAIN 

Crown 8vo. 



Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2011 with funding from 
The Library of Congress 



http://www.archive.org/details/alongshorewherem01reyn 




A Longshoreman. 



ALONGSHORE 

WHERE MAN AND THE SEA 
FACE ONE ANOTHER 



STEPHEN REYNOLDS 



WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY MELVILLE MACKAY 



'Here begins the sea that ends not tiWthe world's end. 
Where tue stand. . . .' — Swinburne. 



jfSeto gotfe 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 



1910 

AH rights reserved 



.-R 3 



Copyright, 1910 
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 



Set up and electro typed. Published October, 19 10 



WortooDtj ^ress: 
Berwick & Smith Co., Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 



©CI.A273533 



NOTE 



Most of the chapters in this volume have been printed serially 
in the Westminster Gazette, to the Editor of which the 
Author's special thanks are due. Two sketches of fishing 
on a large scale from a French port have been added by way 
of contrast, and of those two 'A Herring Haul' has been 
printed in Blackwood' s Magazine. Three other chapters 
are based on articles which have appeared in the English 
Review and Country Life. The Appendix 'Small Holdings 
on the Sea,' is reprinted from the Daily News in the hope 
that more attention maybe drawn to the subject before it is 
too late. 



CONTENTS 



i. The Longshore 

2. Tides and the Beach 

3. Winds and Waves 

4. Squalls 

5. Fogs 

6. Old Boats 

7. Fishermen's Houses 

8. Semaphore 

9. They there Kids 
10. Frights 

n. An Old Man's Tale 



PAGE 

3 



II 



3* 

40 

54 

65 
7i 
78 
90 



viii ALONGSHORE 

III 

12. Longshore Fisheries . 

13. A Fleet of Nets 

14. Lame Duck Hunting 

15. A Sort of a Kind of a Wreck 

16. Seining . . . 

17. A Glut of Mackerel 



IV 



18. Beachcombings 

19. Flotsam and Jetsam . 

20. Beautiful Onionhead 
2i. A Drownded Corpse 

22. The Bare-Kneed Mate 

23. Navy Chaps 

24. A Legend 



V 



25. Two Fishers Abroad . . . 

26. A Herring Haul in a French Steam-Drifter 

APPENDIX 

Small Holdings on the Sea .... 



PAGE 

"3 
123 

132 
141 
153 
165 

179 
190 
210 
222 
232 
245 
259 

269 
291 

321 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

i. A Longshoreman . . . . . Frontispiece ^ 

2. Broad Ebb ...... To face page 14 k" 

3. 'Our own Beacon Light' . " 52 y 

4. They there Kids .... "82 , 

5. 'A Moonglade that stretched to the End 

of Sight' " 160 , 

6. 'The Shoal Water of Low Tide froths, 

tosses, and cries upon the Sand' . " 182 t 

7. Broken Rocks at Low Tide ... " 230 v ' 

8. 'The Heavy Reluctant Break of the 

Ground-Swell' .... "260 I 



ALONGSHORE 



XI 



Break, break, break, 

On thy cold grey stones, O Sea! 
And I would that my tongue could utter 

The thoughts that arise in me. 

O well for the fisherman's boy, 

That he shouts with his sister at play! 

O well for the sailor lad, 

That he sings in his boat in the bay! 

Tennyson. 



TO SAMUEL WOOLLEY 

Dear Uncle Sam — A friend of yours and of 
mine, a man very experienced in affairs, was say- 
ing one day that you would have been distinguished 
in any walk of life; even in a starch-collar and a 
high-poll hat. I thought so too; but — and there 
to me was all the difference — you wouldn't have 
been Uncle Sam. You'd have been yourself, of 
course; and some one else. No doubt your keen 
eye would have been valuable in science; but I'd 
rather bathe a poisoned finger in your elder-flower 
water than have you knife it as a surgeon after- 
wards. No doubt your long accurate memory 
would have made you a scholar; but I'd rather 
you taught me your own sea-lore than a mountain 
of other folks' learning; and I am sure it is better 
to listen to your own peculiar wisdom, gathered 
from a hard-spent life, than it would be to have 
you a professor or a sky-pilot, living soft. No 



xiv ALONGSHORE 

doubt that lashing tongue of yours — when you'm 
up for it — would have served you well in Parlia- 
ment; but I'd rather Uncle Sam heaved the tiller 
at my head for not keeping the boat steady, than 
that Samuel Woolley, Esquire, M.P., and so forth, 
should smash the liberals or the conservatives — 
which? — what do you say? I do doubt whether 
your reckless independence would have suited 
trade, where you would still, unless I am much 
mistaken, have been more concerned to see on 
how little you could live in your own way, than 
how much you could make somehow else. But 
there are other people to do those other things. 
There is only you to be Uncle Sam. 

And you, I believe, could only have been you 
upon the longshore, where land and sea meet, 
where man and the sea face one another. For the 
longshore is powerful to mould men, because, to 
make a living there, they must fit their whole lives 
to it, not merely their working hours, but their 
sleeping and waking and eating, their aims and 
watchfulness. We wait long and often there: 
the sea and the fish wait never. There, and there 
only, can be found the peculiar conditions which 
make longshoremen what they are — a breed some- 
what apart — courtiers of the sea, more intimate 



TO UNCLE SAM 

with her than landsmen can imagine, more 
dependent on her slightest mood than those who 
go down to her in ships. 

It was about those conditions, in the broadest 
sense of the word, that I wanted to write a book; 
not about certain men, women, and children this 
time, but about the sea and the beach and your 
rocks; the tides and eddies, both of water and of 
humanity, that set alongshore; what you and the 
likes of you have to contend with and what you 
glory in. I wanted, in a word, to describe not 
certain longshoremen, but the longshore itself. 

Here's my attempt. You'll see the difference. 
In A Poor Man's House the sea was a background 
for people; here people are in the background; 
are a part, so to speak, of the scenery. What I 
have tried to describe, we both love, and both 
curse at times. Writing and fishing — fishing for 
words and fishing for fish — have much in common. 
Hence, perhaps, our fellow-feeling. 

And accept the dedication of the book, Uncle 
Sam. It is indebted to you; not so much for 
what you have actually told me with your mouth, 
as for what your manner of life has taught me, 
and what you have put me in the way of learning 
for myself; the beauty and poetry of the long- 



xvi ALONGSHORE 

shore, as changeable as the sea, as baffling as men, 
and even harder to catch in words than fish in 
nets. You will know what I have left out and 
where I have gone wrong; but, having such eyes 
of your own, you will at least credit me with 
having eyes too, and will not be blind enough 
to suppose that everything I have observed 
somebody must be blamed for telling me. With 
those incapable of reading books to any better 
purpose than that of identifying the characters in 
them, nothing can be done, I suppose, except smile 
at the absurd mistakes they make, and will certainly 
make over this book; but of one thing I am glad; 
there is no character, drawn from life, in this or 
the other book, of whom I have not spoken, quite 
truthfully I believe, a deal better than the afore- 
said book-detectives and beach-gossips do. Nor 
have any fishing secrets or marks been given away 
by me. You who know them best will know that 
too. 'If people only know'd what fishing's like 
. . . .' you've often said. I have tried to tell them. 
But one thing I have left out, namely just how to 
catch the fish upon exactly the right mark. That 
we'll do together, when 'tis fitty and we'm up 
for it. 

Such zest you have found in life alongshore, 



TO UNCLE SAM xvii 

that, though old, you wish you may never die. 
Long life to you, Uncle Sam! It's a great thing 
to look upon life open-eyed, with its evils and 
hardships and troubles, and upon men with their 
ways, and still to find them good. That, you 
succeed in doing, grumble and cuss as you may. 
This book, these words, are like your conversation, 
an echo of life lived. — Yours, Steve. 



July 1910, 



B 



i. THE LONGSHORE 



Last night the sea-wind was to me 
A metaphor of liberty, 

And every wave along the beach 
A starlit music seemed to be. 

To-day the sea-wind is to me 

A fettered soul that would be free, 

And dumbly striving after speech, 
The tides yearn landward painfully. 

To-morrow how shall sound for me 
The changing voice of wind and sea? 
What tidings shall be born of each? 
What rumour of what mystery? 



The very soul of the longshore is echoed in that 
little poem of Mr. William Watson's; so far, 
that is, as it speaks to a man who only thinks 
and feels there; who treats it as a work of 
nature's art; who answers out of himself the 
thoughts suggested to him by the sea, and in that 
sense holds conversation with it. But when one 
day I showed Changed Voices to a longshoreman 

3 



4 ALONGSHORE * 

born and bred, he first inquired what 'metaphor' 
means, and then pronounced judgment thus: 
'Aye ! 'tis all very good so far as it goes, but it 
don't go far enough. 'Tis true what he talks 
about, I'll say that; I've often an' often felt the 
same when I've been out there alone by night, or 
wi' my mate asleep under the cutty; only the 
likes of us can't make verses out o' what us feels. 
That's the time when things enter into your 
mind, for all you may be keeping watch so that 
a fish can't jump wi'out you noticing o'it. Thic 
chap, wi' his sea-wind yesterday an' to-day an' 
to-morrow. . . . Why, I've a-see'd it change 
every hour o' the day an' night! If he was 
depending on the sea-wind for his living, an' his 
life too, come to that, an' had a parcel o' chil'ern 
depending on him, he'd watch the wind more care- 
ful'n that. He'd watch it three days afore 'twas 
come, an' three days a'ter 'twas gone. He'd watch 
it like you watches your wife just afore her goes up 
over for her first. I knows thic mystery he speaks 
of; but there's a hell of a lot more in it than that, 
'cause thee casn't watch for mysteries if thee doesn't 
live, an' thee casn't live if thee doesn't watch all 
o'it, mysteries an' all. I wonder do thic fellow 
wake up at night every time the wind changes ?' 



i LONGSHORE POETRY 5 

The poet would probably think the longshore- 
man dull and ignorant; the longshoreman 
would be quite sure of the poet's ignorance. 
Small changes in the wind are hardly noticeable 
back on land; there is no true wind at all to be 
found among the eddying draughts of cities. 
Deep-sea sailing vessels beat up against it, or run 
before it, and steamships steer into the teeth of it; 
but a longshoreman, in his little open boat, is at 
the mercy of its every variation. If the wind 
freshens he must hard up and get home; if it 
falls to a breath he must take to his oars and row. 
An hour's fair weather, and he is to sea about his 
business. He may not have another chance that 
moon. 

There is not for him less poetry, if fewer poems, 
in the changing voices of the sea, because they 
command his life as well as talk to him; because 
they bespeak his workaday doings as well as his 
moods of wonder; because they assail his ears 
so continuously that he no longer listens con- 
sciously to them, any more than he listens to 
his own heart-beats — s' ecoute vivre, hears himself 
live, as the French say. If it is the deep ground- 
rumble of London which makes one feel con- 
tinually, at the back of one's mind, the presence of 



6 ALONGSHORE x 

the great city all around, how much more shall the 
unending rumour of the sea keep a longshoreman 
dimly, yet constantly, aware that he lives not only 
on the edge of the land, but on the edges of great 
mysteries! He puts to sea — fish being in the 
bay and the weather fine — the night after he has 
buried mother, father, child, or friend, or the night 
before his wedding. What do the changing voices 
say then? He keeps company with his maid 
along the cliff-tops, past which the noise of the 
sea rises thin and spiritualised into the upper air; 
he brings home his bride along the beach. What, 
again, do the changing voices say? Probably 
he does not listen. But he cannot help hearing* 
And is it not what a man hears without specially 
listening, what sinks imperceptibly, sneaks subtly, 
into his being, that most determines the colour 
of his days? The greatest poetry embraces 
life, not singling out sensations. The greatest 
mysteries are not incompatible with wonder as 
to whether breakfast is ready; nor are they con- 
fined to the highly educated, or to those able 
to make pot-shots at putting them into words. 
Lovers and people very deeply religious have 
always known it. Longshoremen have an inkling. 
The gist of life alongshore is, that it varies 



CABBAGES 7 

on variability itself, as wavelets may vary on the 
surface of irregular waves, or puffs in a veering 
wind. With the winds and waves it varies, down 
to its smallest detail. At the present moment I 
sit here at a table writing this, not simply because I 
want to, and have been wanting for some days, but 
over and above all because I am given the oppor- 
tunity by a fresh north-easter that is turning up 
the sea feather-white, and is driving in upon the 
beach a surf which our small craft cannot face ; or 
at all events will not face, now that the tide is low 
upon the flat sand, and the thump and rattle of the 
ground-swell at high water has changed gradually, 
first to the riotous saw-edged roar of half-tide, 
then latterly to the snarling plash of combers, 
breaking far out, and several at a time, their white 
spray smoking into the air, blown backwards off 
their crests by the same easterly wind which, 
farther out to sea, has heaped them up. In a 
few minutes I shall go and buy seedling cabbages, 
for this chain of reasons: Fair dry winds earlier 
in the year gave my skipper plenty to do on the 
beach. Hot sunshine had started the timbers of 
his boats, so that they needed (and still need) a 
good deal of caulking and varnishing. Less time 
than usual, therefore, was left him to attend to his 



8 ALONGSHORE 

garden. In a mood of singularly blind activity 
(which a little rowing would have righted, had the 
sea been calm enough) , I took over the garden and 
made a start by planting shallots. After the 
heavens hadn't rained upon them for a month, 
I bought a watering-pot out of some money I had 
earned on a fine day with a boat. The shallots 
grew! They grew so green and tall (the garden 
is sheltered from sea-winds) that I was encouraged 
to plant other vegetables, which grew more dis- 
cretely. To-day, however, because he can't get to 
sea, and because these same easterly winds have 
kept the mackerel out of the bay, the 01' Man 
is rather low-spirited and critical. 

'Thy shallots be full up wi' weeds,' he said at 
breakfast. 'Never see'd the like. I've a-know'd 
thic garden crammed wi' stuff by June.' 

'Well, they'm growing, anyhow.' 

'They weeds '11 draw all the nature out o'em; 
bound to.' 

'Thee't hae thy pickled shallots all right in 
due season. 'Tis watering 'em has brought the 
weeds up.' 

'Aye! watering of 'em when I wanted thee 
out to beach. Due season 's late hereabout, seems 
so — like the macker.' 



i LONGSHORE LIFE 9 

The weeding-out ought to be done at once, of 
course; but these easterly winds make one cussed, 
and, instead, I have decided to plant out cabbages 
(must hurry up!), leaving the weeds in peace till 
they are bigger, and easier to catch hold of. 
And finally, if the cats don't conduct their court- 
ships too ferociously among the seedlings, and if 
the pretty little butterflies' moll-scrawls don't eat 
the unfortunate little cabbages right up, we, in 
our turn, next August or September, shall have 
greens for dinner that we owe to this north- 
easter. 'Hasn't never see'd it aforetime?' as 
the 01' Man says. 'I have!' 

But, cabbages included, there is no way of life 
so bound up with all the changes of wind and sea 
as the longshoreman's, not alone as regards the 
business of it, but In all its intimacies, from what 
is trivial and of the moment, even to the begetting 
of children. Where sea and land meet in an age- 
long fight between energy and stubbornness; 
where men snatch their living, by leave of the 
winds, from waters that yield to skill, but are 
never conquered; there, alongshore, is the scene 
of the greatest activity, the quickest reaction, 
the keenest, trickiest struggle between the two. 
There the sea is watched with more than emotion 



io ALONGSHORE 

and wonder — with a never-ending care that has 
behind it all the forces of self-preservation. Fish, 
which are life to a fisherman, go into the nets 
upon the flood tide; dying fishermen go out upon 
the ebb — so it is said. That sort of thing sounds 
impressive to a landsman, especially if he be 
poetical; but to a longshoreman it is crude 
enough. For him there is a deal more than that 
in it. There is his own life. He never can finish 
telling all his lore. He never ceases adding to it. 



2. TIDES AND THE BEACH 

From things very familiar or intimately a part of 
daily life, the definite article the is, in our dialect, 
clipped off. 'In house, 5 we say, instead of 'in 
the house'; 'down under cliff,' instead of 'under 
the cliff'; and even 'up to station.' Most of all 
do we say 'out to beach' where people from land 
would say 'out to the beach.' 'Have 'ee been 
out to beach?' we ask each other at breakfast, 
unless, of course, one of us has had to be out 
there for boat-hauling, or has been mackerel- 
hooking at dawn, or has returned in the night 
from drifting or prawning. It is as if those 
things from which the the is clipped have ceased, 
on account of close association with mankind, to 
be entirely inanimate, and have developed per- 
sonalities. The words denoting them have be- 
come, as it were, proper names. By some such 
mental process the ancient pagans must have 

ii 



12 ALONGSHORE 

created first personalities, then gods and goddesses, 
out of nature. If humanity changes but little, it 
is certain that those who have to do with the 
oldest things — earth and the sea — change last 
and least of all. In a measure, they are pagans 
still 

Now that I have worked and watched upon 
the beach by day and night, I cannot see it any 
more with the eyes of a seaside visitor. Every- 
thing about it means too much. It has undergone 
the change from an acquaintance, whom one likes, 
into a friend whom one loves, yet hates for a 
moment sometimes. Only some chance sound, or 
peculiarly radiant light, or salty whiff of seaweed, 
recalls the old feeling, when the beach was simply 
a sunny bank of shingle, pleasant to lounge upon 
and interesting to watch; when boats, belonging 
to I did not know whom, lay along it, and fisher- 
men, whose nicknames and names I had not learnt, 
mended their nets or stood about with their hands 
in their pockets, for ever idle, as it seemed, and 
picturesque, because the toilsome part of their 
work was seldom seen. Great waves were then a 
glory; so they are now; but it is also a question 
of what body of water they contain and how far 
they will run up the beach among the boats. 



i A LEE SHORE 13 

Mishaps, wettings in beaching and shoving off, 
provided then a fine entertainment; now they 
provide shame if they are my mishaps and anxiety 
if they are somebody else's. No wonder fishermen 
say, 'The likes o' they can't tell what the likes 
o'us got to contend wi', nor never won't!' We 
have to contend, for one thing, with a shifting 
beach. 

To fishermen who are compelled by lack of 
Karbourage to keep their boats and gear upon a 
lee shore, the beach is almost more than home 
itself. From it they shove off, saying, 'Just fitty 
for mackerel, this,' or 'Us ought to hae a catch o' 
herrings this here logie [calm, dull] night.' To 
it they return, sometimes hardly caring whether 
they have caught anything or not, half perished 
with cold, and almost too tired to climb the 
crunching gravel on their way to bed. Upon it 
they are fleeced by fish-buyers who have spent 
their night snug. A fisherman will seldom wander 
far from his beach, and when he is away from 
home it is thoughts of the beach which bother 
him; how far up the sea is running, and whether, 
if it comes on to blow, some one will think to haul 
his boats higher. His life is not imperilled there, 
except when a big boat takes way upon it and 



i 4 ALONGSHORE i 

rushes from top to bottom, but his means of living 
are. For there his whole property is. It is upon 
the beach that a chance wave may beggar him, or, 
worse than that, may sweep away or stove in the 
savings of a lifetime. Men who no longer go to sea 
spend their days, and frequently their nights too, in 
stumping from house to beach and back again into 
house. They cannot rest away from beach. No one 
can. They worry themselves and everybody else : 
"Tis going to blow, I tell thee, or / never see'd 
it coming; an' the tides be on the move. If thee 
doesn't haul up, thee't lose the lot o' it. That's 
what thee's going to do one o' these days, sure 
'nuff V And in consequence nobody hauls up till 
the last moment. A beach, sole defence against 
the sea, is scarcely less treacherous. Effectively, 
it is more so, for it lends a confidence that it 
betrays, and fewer small craft are wrecked afloat 
than are lost ashore. A brave thing is a boat 
upon a rough sea, but washed off the beach with 
its oars and bottom-boards turning somersaults 
around it, bumping along in the tub of the surf, it 
is a wholly pitiful sight. 

From the beach, too, men look out to sea as a 
mother gazes at her child, noting every movement, 
every expression, every shadow, and wondering 



OUR BEACH 15 

what the future may have in store, with pleasure 
and misgiving mingled. 

Every beach has an individuality of its own, 
known to those who watch continually. Ours — 
the portion of it that lies in front of the town and 
sea-wall — faces nearly south, and is about a third 
of a mile long. To the eastward it stretches 
across the river -mouth (usually choked with 
shingle) for a couple of miles under the cliff, 
as far as the reef of rocks called Broad Ebb. 
West of the wall it extends, for a mile or so, to 
the rocks under Steep Head. Because Broad Ebb 
and the Steep Head rocks rise well above high- 
water mark they form natural groynes, and the 
beach is therefore contained within what is techni- 
cally known as a compartment. Inside that com- 
partment it shifts much or little with every tide, 
according to wind and weather, but it evidently 
does not go beyond, for very little shingle is at 
any time to be found among the rock groynes. 
East of Broad Ebb, moreover, the beaches contain 
a greater proportion of black flints, and to the 
westward of Steep Head more flat pebbles. Every 
cove that breaks into the cliffs forms a small com- 
partment for a little beach that neither alters in 
character nor shifts outside. In front of the town, 



1 6 ALONGSHORE 

where the boats are, the beach may be swept away 
till it is twenty feet below the wall, or be piled up 
level with the top. In a tide it will so change. 
Next to good catches fishermen like a good beach. 
They know only too well how much night watch- 
ing, how much hauling up-over, they will be saved 
if they can leave their boats high in safety — out 
the way o'it ! 

To many visitors a man in a blue jersey 
is a sea-encyclopaedia. But when they ask us, 
'What time is it high tide?' we have very 
often to guess. What we do know is, whether 
the tides are pinching or on the move; whether, 
in other words, they are shortening or lengthening, 
neap or spring. At long tides (the longest is usu- 
ally on the third day after new or full moon) every 
craft must be drawn up higher, and every man in 
the boating season, at low water, must get wet and 
strain himself to pieces, hauling and shoving boats 
across the flat sand at the bottom of the beach, or 
carrying ashore ladies no longer featherweight. 
Besides which, for an equal strength of wind, the 
waves possess an altogether greater force when 
the tides are on the move. A souVesterly gale 
on the top of a long equinoctial tide keeps 
everybody out to beach, and sweeps the shingle 



i SHINGLE SHIFTING 17 

along. . . . 'My word/ says Benjie, 'what I 
have a-see'd shift herefrom before now, and boats 
washing across the road! And then they comes 
along to 'ee an' says, "Magnificent sea, isn't it, 
my man?" — "Iss," I tells 'em, "lay a hand on 
this here rope, if you please, an' haul! We'm all 
equal at these times, before seas like this. We 
was all born, an' us all got to die!" 

High water here does not synchronise with the 
flood-tide, nor, consequently, low water with the 
ebb. The flood begins running up alongshore, 
from west to east, about three hours before high 
water, and lasts for three hours after it; the ebb, 
from east to west, runs down for the six hours 
before and after low water. That it is which 
preserves our beach from being swept away from 
us by the prevailing westerly winds and piled up 
at the eastern end of its compartment; because, 
though westerly winds blow oftener, and, with the 
flood's aid, constantly carry the beach eastwards, 
an easterly wind, blowing against the flood, raises 
a bigger sea and shifts westward a far greater 
quantity of shingle in one tide. Hence easterly 
and westerly winds more or less balance one 
another. 

When, during a southerly gale, the breakers 

c 



1 8 ALONGSHORE i 

just reach the sea-wall, they pile the shingle on 
the top of the beach; but should they run well 
against the wall, then they rake the beach away, 
sweeping it east or west. The northerly off-shore 
wind which usually follows, lifts the shingle up- 
wards, first making at high-water mark steep cops, 
or banks, that are bad to land against; and, finally, 
though the sea inshore be ever so calm, digging 
out gullies with hog-backed mounds between them; 
a formation which curiously resembles the gullies 
on the flanks of chalk downs. 

Yet nothing can be accurately predicted of the 
beach. Winds, waves, tides — high or low, long 
or short — and even the weather in the Western 
Ocean may differ in a thousand ways as to strength 
and time, and all exercise their due combined effect; 
likewise the lay of the land. High water itself is 
seldom or never punctual to the tide-table. One 
morning last year high water ought to have been 
not later than eight o'clock. A stiffish breeze had 
been blowing the day before, but at peep o' day the 
sea, though still leaden and troubled, as it always is 
after strong winds, was not too rough for launching 
a small boat. Just before six, however, a lobster- 
potter was nearly capsized by three huge ground- 
swells that suddenly rose and broke outside his 



AN OCEAN SWELL 19 

boat. Thereafter the swell from the Western 
Ocean came hurling in, broad and swift rather 
than high, flecked with foam — great bodies of 
water carrying secondary waves on their backs. 
They began sweeping the shore, running up it not 
so much with violence as with power. In a few min- 
utes boats and gear were awash all across beach. 
Men bundled out from their beds, hauling up-over 
where they could, but perforce leaving the boats 
down where there was no room, between the wall 
and the surf, to push them back for placing the 
shoots under their bows. Then the owners could 
only steady them with ropes, and wait helplessly. 
Looking across beach, under a lowering sky 
which seemed to flatten everything, one could see 
busy blue men jumping about among brown boats 
that lay no longer in orderly ranks, bows upwards, 
but were askew and even broadside on, between 
the unmoving wall and the vicious land-licking 
surf that darted upwards like hungry flames. 
Sometimes boats moved in jerks: that was men 
hauling. Then they glided: that was the sea had 
hold of them. Oars, ways, boxes, and gear gal- 
loped alongshore in the wash. 

Wet to the skin, but with all our boats hauled 
upon the sea-wall, we waited: the sea heaved 



20 ALONGSHORE 

pebbles at us. By a quarter to ten the tide 
seemed at last to be falling. We came in house 
to breakfast. No sooner had we sat down and 
taken off our boots than there was a noise of 
shouting. A couple of ground-swells, larger than 
all the rest, had driven four of our boats across 
the Front and had filled them with shingle and 
water, so that had they shifted again their own 
weight would have stove them in. That was at 
least two hours after nominal high tide. "Twas 
a wonder you hadn' a-losted all they boats !' we 
were told. It was a wonder, but what else could 
we have done? We could not have foreseen a 
tide and swell that would come to our beach 
from the distant, invisible Atlantic. 
A mad gale followed. 



3- WINDS AND WAVES 

'Sudden gale!' Benjle repeats with an immense 
scorn for the weather-foolish. 'Sudden, did 'ee 
say? I've a-see'd this here coming these three 
days past. Didn't want no barometers for to 
foretell this, n'eet no newspapers nuther. They 
things! Why, 'tis the sky tells me, and the sea, 
and the clouds; an' they'd tell you too, if you 
studied 'em like I do. Didn' 'ee see they wool- 
packs lying low down on the horizon the day 
before yesterday? I did. "Ah, me boys!" says 
I, "you'm waiting there an' looking at us. You'm 
coming!" Didn' 'ee see this wind blowing out- 
side there, out in the offing, last night? Black 
'twas on the water, black as pitch, an' I see'd 
the water turning up white; an' in here 'twas a flat 
calm. 'Bout ten o'clock I see'd the little billow 
coming in. "Here 'tis then!" I says. "Come 
along if you'm coming." Lord! when I was out 



22 ALONGSHORE 

here about one last night, after I'd had an hour's 
sleep an 1 a cup o' tay — while you was snug abed 
— the sea was crying, crying 'twas on the sand at 
low tide. An' you knows what it means when you 
hears thic.' 

'I know'd something or other was coming,' a 
bystander remarks. 'My corn was stabbing all 
yesterday. ... I got the rheumatics chronic in 
this left shoulder now. . . .' 

'G'out wi' thy corns! They didn't tell thee 
what 'twas was coming, like the sky an' the sea 
told me. I an't got no corns; I knows how to 
cure they; my gran'mother told me; know'd a 
bit, they ol' women did; an' I an't got no 
rheumatics, though I been wet through in my 
time so long as you been born. An' you wouldn't 
hae no rheumatics nuther if 'twasn't for drinking 
so much o' thic there coffin-polish. I don't want 
no corns nor no rheumatics for to tell me what 
sort o' weather 'tis going to be; n'eet no double-X 
for to help me bear it. I don't need for 'em to 
tell me that us bain't finished wi' it eet. 'Tis 
going to blow harder afore it blows soft. Casn' 
thee hear the gulls screaming back over the houses 
like as if they was in pain? They knows so well 
as you an' me; aye, better! Pretty things! 



t LOOKING WILD 23 

'Tis looking wild, I tell thee — black an' hard. If 
a rainstorm comes 'twill veer in nor'west, an' blow 
off; but I don't say 'twon't back to the south- 
east 'ard, an' then look out for Lord Runkum! 
He'll pile some drift-wood up for me down under 
cliff, Lord Runkum will; an' maybe bring us 
along a bit more beach. They big bass '11 be in 
'long after this, next long tides, after the sand-eels 
an' brit [shoals of fry]. I see'd some o' 'em — ■ 
gert busters — days ago. Mackerel maybe '11 
play along shore too. 'Tis an ill wind that 
don't blow Benjie no good; like 'twill if you 
follows it right through; an' if 't don't, I knows 
how to put up wi' it like us have had to afore- 
time.' 

Hitching up his antique trousers — a sign that 
the last word has been said — Benjie shakes himself 
like a dog just out of the water, and gloats over 
the hazards of the weather. 'Wild!' he repeats, 
T tell 'ee 'tis looking wild. Blow till thee's 
bust!' he exclaims, unknowingly echoing Shake- 
speare, 'an' then p'raps us'll hae it moderater.' 
There is only one wind of which he speaks mourn- 
fully, and that is the down-easter, east or north- 
east. 'Blow by day an' calm by night,' it is then, 
'an' thee casn' do nort by nuther. How the 



24 ALONGSHORE 

wind do hang when it gets up in thic there tatie- 
digging quarter, sure 'nuff V 

Fishermen who do nothing else may easily be 
baulked by weather too calm or too rough; but 
the proper longshoreman can find something to 
do at all times, even if it is nothing more than 
saving his boats and gear in the height of a storm. 
When he can catch nothing with nets, he often 
can with lines. When prawns and lobsters fail, 
there are mussels and winkles to be picked at low 
tide, or laver [edible seaweed] to be gathered off 
the sandy rocks and boiled according to various 
semi-secret recipes. When nothing to eat or sell 
can be got from the sea, jetsam for firewood can 
be collected alongshore, and hidden in safe places 
under the cliffs. And when the sea refuses to give 
up anything at all, living or dead — then the boats 
can always do with a brushful of paint and the nets 
with at least a little mending. Experts in the 
weather sometimes prefer to do nothing but talk 
about it; on the principle, admitted in most walks 
of life, though frequently dubbed laziness along- 
shore, that connoisseurship in anything whatever 
confers a right to consider one's talk about that 
thing as work — hard work. Witness the connois- 
seurs in music, pictures, theology, aye! and life it- 



BENJIE'S PRIDE 25 

self. Like most men who have always, day and 
night, some job to do, your compleat longshoreman 
is a philosopher at leaving it undone. Benjie is 
the compleatest longshoreman I know. He is a 
pastmaster both of doing and not doing. 

He has a pride in the winds and waves ; more 
than pride, a joy. Though he cannot diminish 
the wind by a puff nor the waves by one jot of 
spray, yet by forecasting them he tames them to 
his purpose. They are pets of his; perhaps, 
essentially, not wilder than his cats. On account, 
it may be, of Dartmoor, upreared to the clouds in 
the midst of South Devon, and certainly owing to 
the configuration of the hills and valleys just 
around us, our weather is in some degree local, 
and does not exactly follow the great storm- 
systems of the Western Channel, unless they are 
both strong and wide. Many a day when we can 
see it blowing souVest out in the offing we have 
in here a nor'west wind off land, with sunshine 
and shower. Always a wind from the north blows 
out of the valley, on the west side of the town as if 
it were a north-east wind and on the east side of 
the town as if it were a nor'west wind, so that 
on either tack there is a headwind, and a dig with 
the oars is the quickest way home. Benjie is 



26 ALONGSHORE t 

never taken aback by such purdling winds. He 
curses them for baffling him, and for fulfilling 
his expectations he approves them, all in the 
same breath. He is the winds' candid friend. 

Immoderate weather is sufficiently predicted by 
the Meteorological Office, by barometers, and by 
chemical weather-glasses, the liquid inside of which 
fills with feathery crystals on the approach of 
storm — or, misleadingly enough, during fine frosty 
spells. On our local and on moderate weather 
Benjie is still the supreme authority, whatever 
science says. The rest of us know that brassy 
skies mean brazen weather; that a hard eastern 
horizon presages an easterly wind; that when the 
high white clouds, instead of racing out to sea 
with a brisk northerly breeze, stay almost motion- 
less above it, then the wind will back out and 
blow harder; that little white ragged clouds — 
Benjie calls them messengers — floating underneath 
the darker higher masses, foretell wild weather; 
that southerly winds are felt first on the tops of 
the cliffs; that the weather changes usually on 
the turn of tide; that swells precede storms as 
well as follow them; that fine 'foxy' days, when 
hot sunshine burns the breeze up, don't last; and 
that sunset and dawn have a hundred secrets to 



THE HEART'S WILDNESS 27 

tell — all that we know, but we do not observe it 
with Benjie's keenness; and the delicate indica- 
tions which are too small and too numerous to 
argue from, which can be felt as a whole rather 
than observed separately — those we cannot feel as 
Benjie does, nor sum them up so surely with his 
nearly infallible instinct. 

Most of all, his pride in the winds and waves 
arises from this fact, that he has weathered all 
weathers himself. When younger men jeer at his 
speeches he is able to declare, 'I've lived rough; 
I've been hungry; I've gone barefooted; and I'd 
wear down you youngsters yet. Just you come 
'long wi' me. . . .' But they don't go; they 
don't take up the challenge. Benjie would win. 
He has won already. After a long life, which no 
one could call successful in the worldly sense, he 
finds it in him to say often, 'If I lives to be a 
hundred — an' I hope I may. . . .' Unlike the 
deep-sea sailors, he seldom speaks of 'dirty' 
weather, preferring to call it wild. The choice of 
phrase contains his verdict on the winds and waves. 
Moderate weather ministers to his necessities, wild 
weather to the wildness of his heart. 

That, indeed, is what the winds and waves do 
for us all. Therein lies their strange kinship with 



28 ALONGSHORE 

mankind. They minister to our wildness — to 
that wildness which, after all these centuries of 
civilisation, we still feel to be the best part of us. 
And if they kill us. . . . Is not every passion 
a dangerous thing? Is not man's soul itself an 
explosive within him — the explosive which drives 
him, like a projectile, across time? Invalids near 
the sea have been known to grow madly excited 
with a rising gale, so much so that they had to be 
calmed with drugs, and, when the gale had blown 
itself out, were as if they lacked life. But it is 
good to see how the eyes of sturdy men, though 
bloodshot and half bunged-up with salt spray, will 
kindle in a storm. They will show embarrassment 
sometimes on finding themselves observed, as they 
might if you had suddenly come across them 
hugging their maid in a quiet corner. 

Rarely, except in mid-ocean, when it has been 
blowing steadily for some time, can the height and 
speed of waves be in exact proportion to the wind. 
In here, if a southerly wind send a ground-swell 
along before it, then by the time it arrives it has 
already that swell to its advantage. Tides and 
currents add to or lessen its effect. Waves rise 
quicker in shoal water, but never to the same 
height as in deep. Rain flattens down the sea, like 



LORD RUNKUM 29 

oil, but not so much. The most experienced 
longshoreman cannot always tell why the sea 
makes so much faster at one time than another. 

There is a tale hereabout of two fishermen 
brothers who flourished about a hundred years 
ago. In the very early morning one of them 
used to get out of bed and hold a lighted tallow 
dip outside the window. If it blew out, "Tisn't 
fit, Bill,' he would say. 'Us can't go to sea. 'Tis 
blowing hard.' And if it did not go out, he would 
say, "Tisn't no good, Bill. There isn't wind 'nuff 
for to sail a feather.' And then he would shut the 
window, crawl back to bed, and the brothers would 
put away another hour or two. Perhaps they 
were hard of hearing; for otherwise they had no 
need to use a candle. Just as different winds make 
different sounds among different sorts of trees, so 
every wind and every kind of wave — lop, swell, 
run, and so forth — has its own characteristic noise 
upon the beach. It is the first thing one listens 
for on waking up, and saves one many a shivering 
journey from a back room to a front window. 
All that is necessary is to know what the sea was 
like the evening before, and the time of high and 
low water. Easterly winds have in them more 
malice than westerly gales. A south-easter — Lord 



30 ALONGSHORE * 

Runkum — sounds as if it is driving against the 
beach in fighting order; whereas sou'westerly waves 
seem to be driven ashore pell-mell, and, as it were, 
against their wish. With easterly winds there is 
more rattle of shingle, but a less confused roar 
of water. A ground-swell with little wind thumps 
the shore more heavily than the lop raised by 
much wind, but there are quieter intervals between 
the thumps. When a northerly wind blows fairly 
true off land, there are either no waves at all, the 
merest murmur along the beach, or else, if there 
be a swell, it is utterly tired and lazy. Gusty 
west or west-sou'westerly winds are accompanied 
by the babble of little waves breaking sideways 
against the beach, and very rapidly one after 
another — such a sound as you may hear beside 
an inland lake. But the swell that those winds send 
in from the Channel, if they blow long enough, 
contains great bodies of water which pile them- 
selves up off-shore and seem to hesitate, gathering 
together their forces before they break; then swirl 
in, foam-crested, and run far up the beach with a 
long scraping rattle. The progress of a gale 
can likewise be gauged without opening one's 
eyes to watch through the window the clouds 
bundling across a rectangular murky patch of sky. 



'ALL TOGETHER, BOYS !' 31 

First comes the busy scuffle of the lop, an almost 
continuous washing noise; then, as the wind rises 
and the sea makes, each wave and the rattle of its 
undertow gradually detaches itself from the gen- 
eral confusion of waters, until finally, at high tide, 
the thud of great breakers shaking the shore with 
their weight dwarfs the uproar between them 
almost to the similitude of silence, and keeps the 
ear for ever on a stretch of anticipation. 

Then it is that the wind seems to be coming to 
us from right round the globe. Our bay ceases to 
be our boundary. We live no longer inhabitants 
of our one little spot. The same wind and waves 
that dare us to leave the beach, lest we lose boats 
or gear, make us, in feeling, inhabitants of the 
whole wide world. Hence the power, at such 
times, of the one phrase, All together, boys! For 
we, a handful of men, concerning ourselves deeply 
in small matters, are brought face to face with the 
boundless. 



4 . SQUALLS 

Fifty years or more Benjie has been knocking 
about in little boats, and he declares at least once 
a week, "Tis better any day to row wi' two oars 
than to sail wi' two reefs. There ain't never no 
dependence to be placed in they squally winds. / 
knows 'em !' He knows them because he has 
sailed in them so often at all times, both day and 
night. The twenty-mile stretch of coast along 
which he picks his periwinkles, catches his prawns, 
fishes for mackerel and herring (not often now), 
and plays with the sea-birds, is nothing if not 
squally. Our home beach, as one might say, lies at 
the mouth of the largest of several deep combes 
that run southward, through the hog-backed 
Devon hills, to the sea. On either side, the great 
red cliffs, splashed and topped with green, rise 
steeply five hundred feet, then dip to sea-level, then 
rise again. Down the combes, which narrow and 

32 



i SPITEISH PUFFS 33 

deepen as they approach the sea, the northerly 
wind gathers force. From the gaps in the cliffs it 
springs. There is something cat-like in its malice, 
in its agility, in its very repose between succes- 
sive puffs. Well does Benjie speak of its blowing 
out 'spiteish' from the land. Inexperienced' 
people can hardly credit what it is like half a 
mile to sea, even when they are plainly told; 
and this is the sort of thing which frequently 
happens when visitors are about: The day is 
brilliantly sunny, the sea calm; or, at all events, 
there is no lop or swell. Some swift dark patches 
on the water do but throw into relief its sparkle 
elsewhere. Close alongshore there is hardly a 
ripple, only breathings upon the surface; further 
out the wavelets are tipped with white; the offing 
looks frothy (or is it only sunshine?) and the sky- 
line is curiously jagged. Any one who troubles to 
glance overhead can see that the lofty white clouds 
are wind-blown and are driving rapidly to sea. 
Few, if any, boats are out. On such a day a 
gentleman and two ladies, perhaps, will stroll 
across beach. They want a trustworthy and, for 
preference, a picturesque man. They approach, 
therefore, a couple of old fishermen, and speak 
to the one who pretends better to a profound 

D 



34 ALONGSHORE i 

respectfulness. 'Boatman, can you take us out 
for a sail? Is there wind enough? Eh?' 

'Well, sir, 'tisn't much of a time, sir.' 

'Why not ?' 

'I wouldn't go to-day if I was you, sir.' 

'But why?' 

"Cause 'tisn't hardly fit, sir.' 

'Why isn't it fit?' 

'You'll get wet, sir.' 

The ladies look down their clothes. The 
gentleman assumes the air of an army officer or 
a salted mariner. 'Oh, we don't mind wet! 
Besides, the sea is calm — almost too calm. I like 
it a bit rough.' 

'Iss, sir, so 'tis calm in here; but 'tisn't fit, I 
do assure you.' 

'Why isn't it fit? Don't you want a job, my 
man? Rather lounge about here? Eh? Why 
isn't it jit, as you call it ?' 

'Why, bother the man!' the less respectful 
fisherman bursts out. 'An't he told 'ee for why? 
Why, 'cause 'tisn't fit! That's for why! How 
many more times do 'ee want telling the reason 
why? 'Cause 'tisn't jit!' 

'Better to go along t'other end o' the beach, 
sir,' says the first fisherman. 'Per'aps they'll 



"TISNT FIT' 35 

take 'ee out therefrom. / shan't.' And when 
the party has moved out of earshot, if not before, 
he remarks: 'Fair southerly wind, an' they sort 
o' people don't come near 'ee. An' when 'tis 
squally, fit to blow 'ee out of the water, then 
they'm mazed for to go to sea.' 

It is not good to have landsmen aboard a small 
open boat in squally weather. They shift about 
so slowly; they seem to be all legs; and they 
appreciate neither the urgency of a squall, nor, 
when wet and alarmed, the stiffness of a well- 
handled craft. But for a crew that knows its boat 
and knows the coast, a wind that is squally (within 
limits) is the most sporting wind of all. Books 
on boat-sailing usually say, in effect, if not in so 
many words: 'Keep a sharp look-out to wind- 
ward for squalls. They are indicated by a darken- 
ing of the water. When the squall strikes, luff 
up. If the squall is strong, ease the sheet as well. 
And if the squall is both strong and long, haul 
down and shorten sail.' 

Benjie's directions are much more precise. 'If 
'tis only cat's-paws,' he says, 'you can often dodge 
'em. But if the puff comes black on the water, 
you look to your tiller and luff up; an' when you 
sees 'em coming green, jest you keep the sheet in 



3 6 ALONGSHORE 

your hand, an' luff up an' ease the sheet off too; 
an' if they rushes upon 'ee white and roaring, all 
of a boil an' froth, then you let fly the sheet an' 
reef down snugger, or haul down an' take to your 
oars, an' get in out o'it so quick as you can. 
Don't you play wi' they shiny harum-scarum 
jokers. My senses! Don't you get taken aback 
by one o' they!' 

Luffing up — bringing boat, and the sail with it 
more nearly into line with the wind, so that the 
lateral, capsizing, pressure of the wind becomes 
less — involves steering out of the course. Easing 
off the sheet does not; for then only the sail is 
slacked into line with the wind. Either method, 
or both, can be used in a boat with one lug-sail, or 
a lug and mizzen. Fishermen, who like to keep a 
hand free and therefore make fast the sheet with 
a slippery hitch, become marvellously clever at 
gauging beforehand the strength of a squall and 
luffing up to it just sufficiently. Seldom do they 
lose way on a boat or drop over upon the other 
tack. 'Touch her up through' is an expression 
of theirs for beating to windward through squalls, 
and no phrase could hit off better the delicacy of 
the operation, as they do it, and their sensitive 
handling of the tiller. Usually they seem to 



THE WINDGATE 37 

mistrust working the sheet as a means of standing 
up to puffs; they leave it fast, letting fly in 
emergency; but working the sheet, carefully done 
with gear that runs free, should be as safe, and 
prove quite as speedy, as luffing. A very sporting 
race might be sailed over a squally course by two 
boats, one of which agreed to luff up to squalls, 
leaving the sheet fast; the other to 'saw' its 
sheet and hold its course. In few places, however, 
do squalls blow true enough for such a match. 
Squalls are as various as the clouds and almost as 
beautiful. They are indeed clouds — water-clouds, 
owing their forms as much to the wind as the 
clouds in the sky do. 

At Steep Head the highest of the cliffs bulges 
out into the sea and ends abruptly. On the west 
side the cliff slopes gently downwards to Refuge 
Cove. To the east is a gap called the Windgate. 
Steep Head stands in the path of the winds escap- 
ing from the inland hills and valleys. Air-eddies 
rush around it in all directions, so much so that, 
rowing beneath it with the wind northerly, it is 
sometimes hardly possible to make way against 
easterly puffs, and in sailing there with the wind 
north-east the boat may have to be put round 
to face a westerly squall. When the wind is 



38 ALONGSHORE 

strong nor'west, the Windgate squall, which is 
regular and powerful, stretches in a broad bluish- 
green line for a couple of miles south-east to sea. 
At the base of the cliff and in the little bays on 
either side, purple cat's-paws flit fanwise on the 
water, curve about, dodge the rocks — like one- 
winged butterflies — and disappear as suddenly as 
they arose. They seem to be formed by bundles 
of wind, as it were, dropping from a height upon 
the sea. Puffs too long and strong to retain the 
cat's-paw shape strike water further from the cliff; 
they are commonly a purple-black where the wind 
presses most, and behind and in front of a slightly 
opalescent green, as if a few gallons of milk had 
been spilt into the green water. Sometimes — for 
reasons connected, no doubt, with the angle of the 
wind's impact — the colouring is reversed, and only 
the edges of the squall are purple. Like that in 
colour are the 'shiny harum-scarum jokers' which 
follow a boat round and catch it aback. Still 
stronger puffs proceed straight out to sea and 
make it feather-white, or raise wonderful streaks 
of foam, like lace without any cross-stitches. 
Whether the streaks diverge, or appear to con- 
verge — and they do both — probably depends also 
on the angle between wind and water. A little 



THE DOLDRUMS 39 

out from Steep Head is a spot called the Dold- 
rums, the exact position of which varies with the 
wind. Squalls dart around it, but do not often 
break into its calm. Fishermen steer a mile to 
sea in order to avoid the place, because it must 
be crossed with the help of oars, and because, 
on emerging from it, one never knows from which 
side the first squall is coming. Steep Head is 
bad to pass; I have seen a boat beneath it let 
the sheet fly half-a-dozen times and haul down 
twice; but it is then that squalls are at their 
loveliest. Watched from the top of the Head, 
they are the winds' playfulness made visible. For 
men in a boat they are the winds' caprice, and 
at night the winds' devilry, only half visible — 
spiteful, tormenting, and uncanny. 



5. FOGS 

Benjie warned us all right. While he was help- 
ing shove the boat off the beach he took his hands 
away from the gunwale, stood more than upright, 
and looked keenly out to sea. 'Aye!' he said, 
'southerly wind, an' the leastis bit of a chill in it. 
I've a-see'd fogs come in on a day like this, for all 
'tis the middle o' summer. Where be you voung 
fellers bound for?' 

'Down along,' we replied. 

We didn't tell him we were after cakes and 
scald cream because Benjie, having in youth made 
a virtue of necessity, now, in his old age, scorns 
too many meals a day. 

Tour o'ee, is it?' he continued. 'An' all 
o'ee skipper, I'll lay. Well, jest you take care to 
keep a good look-out. You bain't passengers on 
a steamship, remember. Fogs don't matter to the 
likes o' they; all they got to do is to bide quiet 

40 



i CAKES AND CREAM 41 

where they be to, 'cause if the skipper runs 'em 
ashore or into a collision, they got to go, an' if he 
don't, they an't; 'tis his look-out, not theirs, an' 
they can't help o'it one way or t'other. They an't 
got no responsibility for their own lives aboard 
they there steamers; the crew's got that; but in 
these yer little packets you'm all crew, an' jest you 
keep a good look-out. If you sees a fog rising, 
you get in under land so quick as you can. You 
won't hurt there, not unless it comes on to blow, 
an' if 't does, the fog '11 lift. An' if you don't 
come home, I reckon I can row down under cliff 
an' find 'ee. Don't you be in too much hurry to 
hoist your sail,' he added with his sea-gull's chuckle. 
'Row to the out-ground o' Broken Rocks, an' 
then if you hoistis sail, you'm going to fetch they 
there cream-pans, you'm after, in one tack!' 

We did; and we ate the cake and cream lying 
in a circle round a teapot, on a beach so sunny 
that the heat of the pebbles struck through jerseys 
and shirts to our elbows. On our homeward 
journey the wind dropped, whilst the lop still kept 
up, making the mast jig in its step, the sail flap to 
it, and the boat plunge about on the water like an 
empty barrel. Although two of the crew were 
fishermen's boys, and the third was a land boy 



42 ALONGSHORE 

mazed to go to sea (he wears navy uniform now 
instead of corduroys that stiffen like boards with 
salt-water), they began to be yellow in the face — ■ 
not with sea-sickness exactly, so much as with what 
one might call sea-cream-sickness. Therefore, for 
their stomach's sake, I got them to take the oars, 
and a bad look-out was kept — ; a bad look-out 
until one of us said: 'Southerly wind again 
to-morrow. Look at thic bank o' cloud out 
there.' 

The one who was nicknamed Captain took the 
trouble to look. 'Clouds, you fool!' he exclaimed; 
"Tis fog! 'Tis a gert fog-bank.' 

We were a mile and a half to sea, and a couple 
of miles from home. We started rowing hard. 
The fog-bank crept towards us still faster. Use- 
less to try to escape it. A bird must feel so when 
a cat, flattened to the ground, crawls down on it 
without apparent motion. 

Soon the warm light of the sun was polluted 
by a cold whiteness. The sun itself, for a passing 
moment a shining round thing in the heavens, 
disappeared altogether. The fog was upon us, 
thickening. In an instant the great high red cliffs 
to landward were snuffed out as if they had been 
a shuttered light. The fog got down our throats, 



i FOG LONELINESS 43 

putting ns in mind of suffocation nightmares. We 
were curiously alone; no land, no sun, no clouds, 
no sky; hardly any sea; not even darkness visible! 
And the thickness of the fog was parting us, as 
it were, from one another. We even spoke 
louder. 

There was nothing to guide us. Nobody 
aboard possessed a compass. We steered by the 
lay of the waves, keeping careful watch on them; 
for the direction in which they are travelling is not 
easy to tell in a fog, and had the boat turned right 
round we should have gone on rowing straight 
out to sea without knowing it. 

A drifter loomed up very close to us. 'Where 
be us?' they inquired. 

'A mile to the sou'west'ard.' 

'You'm not going right,' they shouted. 

'You follow us!' we replied. 

They did put themselves on the same course 
as ours (so much for youthful assurance!), and in 
a minute, because we could row our smaller boat 
the faster, they were hidden by mist. We were 
alone again. 

After we had pulled some distance further, and 
felt almost certain that we were rowing out to sea, 
we saw suddenly, not very far from us, a pair of 



44 ALONGSHORE 

boots. There they were ! a pair of boots with 
feet in them; and they moved up and down 
laboriously. To the boots legs added themselves, 
trousered legs; then hips and waist and shoulders. 
It was like an apparition, like the creation from 
nothingness of a modern man, clothes and all. 
At last, just where the fog was darkest and tinged 
with red, owing to the red cliffs behind it, there 
appeared the complete figure of a man walking on 
the beach beneath the low-lying cloud. We had 
been, without knowing it, not a couple of hundred 
yards from land! 

While we rowed home with a cheerier stroke, 
the fog gradually lifted itself up the face of the 
cliffs, like a balanced canopy of gossamer fabric 
suspended in the air by countless threads of 
infinite fineness and elasticity, until finally — as if 
the bushes at the top of the cliff were smouldering 
— very slowly, very gently, very lingeringly, it 
drifted away over land. 

The boat we had spoken followed us ashore, 
and when Benjie reproached us with trying to row 
back, instead of waiting for the fog to lift, we 
retorted gaily: 'Well, anyhow, Benjie, we got 
here, and we piloted a drifter home into the 
bargain.' Benjie, at that, began a discourse on 



PILOT WORK 45 

the fogs he has experienced in his sixty years, on 
ships ashore, and on ships he has found in the fog 
that had lost their way. 

It is a proud event for a fisherman when he 
goes in search of a ship — most often an excursion 
steamer — that is lost near shore in a fog, finds 
her, tells her where she is, and guides her into 
safety. 'My senses!' he will say, 'to think o' 
they there captains navigating up an' down this 
coast all the year round, an' then depending on 
the likes o' us in our little craft, what an't got no 
navigation cistificates, for to bring 'em into safety 
direc'ly there's the leastis bit o' fog. They ought 
to be 'shamed o' theirselves! I don't never lose 
meself, however thick 'tis. I always knows where 
I be, when 'tis anywhere near land, an' 'tisn't often 
I carries a compass, 'cept drifting, though I got a 
fine one put away in house, only I don' know 
where to lay me hand on it' Many fishermen 
(not all) do seem to have an extra sense, which 
tells them when they are near land, especially near 
cliffs. Whether it is that they can detect a back- 
wash from the shore, a hardly perceptible change 
in the boat's motion (boats drag in shallow water) ; 
whether a faint echo, or a deadness in the air warns 
them; or whether, knowing tides, currents, boat, 



46 ALONGSHORE 

and their own stroke, they are able to estimate the 
distance they have covered — they cannot explain. 
Simply, they feel they are near land. And that, 
indeed, may be the correct explanation; for if the 
human body is so sensitive to changes of pressure 
that its health varies with the height of the ba- 
rometer, and if, as scientists have proved, high 
masses of land can deflect a pendulum sideways, 
against gravity, it is possible that a cliff, by slightly 
altering the pull of gravity on a man, may make 
him aware of its nearness. 

The stretch of coast where we follow the fishing 
is so far free from mistiness that it was not till 
long after I ceased going to sea as a mere gen'le- 
man, well-nigh as irresponsible as a steamboat pas- 
senger; not, in fact, till my first night's herring- 
drifting as mate, that the compass which I always 
carried after the cakes and cream trip was of any 
real use in steering home through a fog of the worst 
kind — one of those black north-easterly fogs that 
come in the wind as well as in the absence of wind. 

We were drifting in Seaton Bay in February. 
When we arrived there after six or seven miles 
rowing with the sweeps, we remarked on the black- 
ness of the sky behind Seaton, and laughed, because 
against such a background the houses of Seaton, 



<A BLACK OL' SHOP' 47 

built along a bar of shingle, looked like a row of 
poll-parrots on a perch; and almost as we laughed 
the north-easter came piping down the valley of 
the Axe till the bay was feather-white and all of 
a hiss with broken wavelets. "Tis a black oP 
shop!' the OP Man complained. Td sooner 
hae six nights west than one night east up here. 
'Tis more homely like, west. One thing, us 
needn't to shoot if us bain't minded, but if us do, 
'tisn't no good hauling in 'fore two or three in the 
morning, 'cause the tide won't serve for landing. 
What time did 'ee say 'twas? Seven o'clock? Four 
hours, we been, getting up here ! Come on, then ! 
Let's heave 'em out if we'm going to. Might 
pick up a night's work.' 

We shot six forty-fathom nets, made fast the 
road, boiled up some cold tea on a paraffin flare 
blazing smokily in an old pot. Then we put on all 
the clothes we could find, stuffed our feet into 
sacks, and lay down for'ard; but not to sleep, for 
even the ability to doze off with numb feet does 
not greatly help one to go to sleep in a north- 
easter that bites through the clothes all over one's 
body. "Tis going to come snow, I believe,' the 
OP Man said. 'Pretty turn-out o't! Where 
be us now? I reckon this yer strong flood-tide is 



48 ALONGSHORE 

going to drive us up to Lyme afore 'tis time to 
haul in.' 

The moon went to bed in a shining mist. We 
watched on, sometimes kneeling against the side 
to peep out over, sometimes standing up to stamp 
our feet. Seaton lamps were put out; nothing 
but Beer light, on the western side of the bay, 
remained. When it grew black around we kept 
watch on the North Star and its Pointers, which 
slowly sneaked down the heavens till they almost 
ceased to point. If we could not tell how far east 
the flood-tide was going to drive us, we wanted at 
least to be sure where north was. Now and then 
the wind, gathering strength, made the boat kick 
like a live thing. Baling out warmed us; hauling 
in half a net, to see how the herrings were — or 
wern't — going in, warmed us still more; but 
greater chilliness followed, so that we almost 
looked forward to the immense labour of hauling 
in-board nearly half-a-mile of wet and heavy net. 

And in such a scuffle, against such a breeze, the 
hauling in, hand over hand, foot by foot, buoy to 
buoy, was a full hour and a half's work. We 
could not attend to much else. At the end, when 
we stood up to blow and to look around — there was 
nothing to look at! Stars, Beer light, everything, 



NORT TO BE SEEN 49 

had gone. We were in an empty waste of black- 
ness, with only the white wave-tops perking out of 
it. And after drifting so many hours we didn't 
know exactly where we were. It was not a thick 
fog so much as a state of air in which nothing 
could be seen. It was as if the air, without losing 
its transparency, had suddenly turned colour and 
gone black. 

In place of the mainsail we hoisted to the main- 
mast an old mizzen. 

'Got thy compass?' the OF Man asked. 

'Aye !' 

'Can 'ee see ort?' 

'No.' 

'Can 'ee hear ort, then?' 

'Nort 't all !' 

'Thee's better get up for'ard, out the way o' 
the lamp, an' see if thee ca'st make out Beer light.' 

Not a glimmer could I catch sight of, though I 
strained my eyes till they saw stars of themselves. 
I did not even know in which direction to look. 

'Come aft again wi' thy compass,' said the OF 
Man, 'an' sit under the lamp an' tell me where I 
be steering to. Where's west now?' 

'Over the port bow.' 

'Well, I reckon if us steers a little bit south o' 

E 



So ALONGSHORE 

west that ought to get us out o' this yer bay, 
past Beer Head all right. If us urns [runs] on 
they rocks there, wi' this weight o' nets in the 
boat, us won't get off in a hurry. Be I steering 
west now ?' 

Beer Head being white — the southernmost 
chalk in England — it shows up so little on the 
clearest of nights that we didn't expect to see it in 
the fog. My compass, moreover, had in it a tiny 
ball of dirt which jammed the needle, and needed 
jerking out of the way every time a bearing was 
taken. While the OF Man stood shivering at the 
tiller I sat against the mizzen halyard, on which the 
lamp was made fast, and jerking, peering into, the 
compass, called out the course every minute or so. 

'You'm just west of south.' 

'Eh?' 

'You'm just west of south! — You'm north of 
west.' 

'Eh?' 

'You'm north of west 1 — You'm going sou'sou'- 
east.' 

'Eh?' 

'Casn' thee hear? Thee't going sou'sou'eastl 
— East 'tis now, due east!' 

'Eh?' 



* NEARLY ASHORE 51 

'How on earth can I tell 'ee if thee's keep thy 
cap down over thy ears? East! Bit north of 
east now. . . .' 

What with the flickering of the lamp, the ball 
of dirt in the compass, uncertainty, and being 
obliged to repeat everything, I could have taken 
up the tiller and beaten it about the OP Man's 
head. At one time or another we steered for 
every quarter of the compass. Near the cliffs, 
where deep combes open to the sea, the wind 
purdles around, as we say, so that it is impossible 
to steer a boat simply by keeping her up to it. 
We sighted a light which must have been in Beer 
village, though we couldn't be certain then that it 
was not a drifter's riding lamp further out to sea. 
We closed up that light, though again we couldn't 
be certain that it was not the fog hiding it. We 
heard surf on a shore. We heard surf again — on 
the wrong side of the boat ! We heard sea-gulls 
fly out, screaming, from a cliff. Then we knew 
that we were under Beer Head — close under it — 
close enough to bring the sea-gulls out. 

'Tiller down!' I shouted. Tut her about! 
Tiller down, quick.' 

'What?' 

Tut the tiller down ! Steer out ! Casn' thee 



52 ALONGSHORE * 

hear? We'm near enough Beer Head to bring 
the gulls out.' 

We'm. . . . Be usf 

With a scuttle and lounge, at last the OF Man 
put the tiller down. The drifter swerved roundly 
out to sea. Once past white Beer Head, we knew 
that due west would bring us home. All along 
on the starboard beam we could hear the rushing, 
as it sounded in the fog, of surf on a shingle shore. 
Presently we glimpsed the looming cliffs, a moun- 
tainous haze within a haze, over the flat foggy sea; 
and before long they took on an outline, but not 
such a one that we could tell by it how far down 
the coast we were. Then, in as little time as it 
took us to say what was happening, dawn stared 
out with the face of a sullen idiot. The cliff 
looming above us turned out to be the cliff next 
to home. We saw our beach, our boats, the front 
of the little town, and, last of all, our own beacon 
light. It was as if we had returned to the 
world after a night's journeying in extra-ter- 
restrial chaos; we had been so utterly alone; 
more divided from all that mankind sees and 
hears and touches than ever a prisoner in his cell, 
more distant from all the familiar things which 
prove to a man from moment to moment that he is 




' Our own Beacon Light.' 



BEFOGGED RECKONINGS 53 

indeed alive, a dweller on earth, a man amongst 
men. 

*I hate these yer fogs!' the 01' Man said on 
landing, with years of animosity in his voice. But 
I could not entirely agree. Fog alongshore is a 
part of coast scenery. By varying the immobile 
cliffs it gives them life. By hiding the sea it 
gives even the sea spaciousness. Not long ago a 
northerly wind, suddenly springing off land, drove 
a fog to the south'ard in great billowy clouds that 
rested on the water, and it seemed as if the heavens 
had come to earth, as if the sky was lowered and 
turned upon its side. And I have seen the life- 
boat put to sea on a foggy day. High in the 
prow she was, high in the stern, and apparently 
motionless except for the sweeping of the oars, 
which was just discernible. Misty and mysterious 
on the water, she looked like some ancient galley 
coming to land after a voyage that had lasted 
hundreds of years. Men of old time, long since 
dead, might have been expected to jump out of 
her when she beached. Through that fog history 
peeped. For fog, which takes away from ships 
their reckonings, is powerful to destroy also the 
reckonings of men's minds. 



6. OLD BOATS 

They lie along the beach, the old boats, more 
scattered than the old men and pensioners who sit 
in a row on the seat under the south wall, and 
much more silent, yet saying as plainly, 'My 
work's done. It's only a dead-calm sea I shall 
face any more. Do 'ee mind the time?. . . .' 
Aye! do 'ee mind the time when this was a sea- 
worthy craft that brought in great catches of 
herring and sailed for the offing at dawn — fair 
wind out and fair wind home — and earned food 
for two generations of children, and saved men's 
lives, and ran ashore in that gale? My God, 
what a sea it was that night! and dark! and 
raining ! and cold ! 

Old boats, like old men, are the historians of 
fishing — saved, it might seem, from the scrap-heap 
expressly for that purpose. As the old men hold 
one's ear, so the old boats catch one's eye, lying 

54 



i DEAD MEN'S CRAFT $5 

there, along the beach. Their faded paint is of 
colours favourite long ago, and it is laid on as 
they used to do then. Deep-keeled, beamy, and 
high in the gunwale, their unwieldiness was no 
drawback at a time when by day or through the 
night there was plenty of help on the beach, before 
fishermen began looking out after softer jobs on 
land, for themselves and for their children. There 
was space to move about in those old boats. That 
was the reward of men who could handle cross- 
handed their long heavy oars, instead of the spoon- 
bladed paddles which have since come into use. 
Though a few of them were so proudly built that 
they are as clean in their lines now as when they 
left the shipwright's yard, the greater number are 
in outline shaky and broken, like old buildings 
drawn by bad artists who in that way only 
can convey a notion of antiquity. Among the 
varnished gigs, punts, skiffs, and dinghies of 
to-day, the old boats are simply — old boats. 
Dead men's names remain on some of them. 

When the clouds called woolpacks have 
gathered up in the sou'western sky, and gulls are 
screaming over the house-tops, and a ground-swell, 
ambling shorewards, already heralds wild weather; 
and when, too, the Meteorological Office (but so it 



56 ALONGSHORE i 

is nowadays!) has foretold a gale, — -men go along 
the sea-wall looking down at the beach, questioning 
if the boats are high enough up, or if, in order 
to avoid night-watching, they ought to be hauled 
up-over the sea-wall itself, out the way of the 
surf. Then, for once, the old boats receive 
attention, and some one says, 'Why don't So-and-so 
take a sledge-hammer to thiccy ol' craft o' his? 
'Tis only labour wasted, I reckon, to haul thic 
thing up-over the wall. Better her'd wash away 
an' be done with. Her's fit for firewood, nort 
else. Her won't never put to sea no more.' 
Nevertheless, the same man refuses to scrap his 
own old boats, and that old boat, when the time 
for hauling up comes, will not be left behind. 
Though her weight strain men to pieces, though 
laughter and derision greet her, up she comes. 
Only, be careful in hauling; don't jerk; steady 
does it; for the cut-rope [painter] of an old boat 
is apt to be very rotten ; and while she is balanced 
on the edge of the wall, with her broad bows high 
in the air and one more pull needed to bring her 
home, the hauling crew, as likely as not, will find 
themselves suddenly on their backs, legs waving, 
heads and elbows bruised, and a slack rope's end in 
their hands. Back bumps the stern of the old boat 



i VETERANS 57 

upon the shingle. But a new cut-rope is made fast 
through the fore end of her keel; she is hauled 
right up and across to the roadway gutter; and 
there she squats, to be lowered back to the 
beach in fine weather, to be cursed again another 
day. 

Toil, not price or rarity, still less picturesque- 
ness, has conferred a value on these old boats. 
Toil created love for them. Left out in all 
weathers, so that the rain turns their bottom- 
boards green (if they have any) and the dry east 
wind starts their timbers, no procession bears them 
like coffins into winter quarters, nor brings them 
out again when the gulls are nesting under the 
cliffs and southerly winds blow gentlier. Neglected, 
cursed, and laughed at, still they hold a place in 
some man's life, in some fisher family's existence; 
still they are faithfully looked after when storm 
reduces fishermen's work to a primitive fight with 
the sea, and it's All together, boys! As veterans 
they enforce a tacit respect on those to whom they 
are a nuisance. "Twould be a grief to him if thic 
there oP craft was losted.' 

How carefully the old boats must have been 
scraped — spattered with blood, too, from knocked 
and bleeding knuckles; — how patiently they must 



58 ALONGSHORE i 

have been allowed to dry, for their paint to lie 
upon them so long! Look at the rowlocks, solid 
oak or elm, worn a couple of inches deep by 
innumerable strokes of the oars. This was, this 
is, the boat in which they rowed from Devon to 
the East-country, digging at the oars all the way; 
that, the boat in which old Hobbledy Bill rowed 
for three hours to try and pass Steep Head against 
a westerly wind, then broke a thole-pin, and before 
he could whittle down another, was drifted back 
again to where he started. He couldn't do it 
now, nor could the old boat; but he'd be willing 
to try, if he had his health and strength, and the 
old boat had hers too. 

For in his day men expected little else except 
toil at the oars. Those old boats, for all their 
virtues, sailed badly to windward. They carried, 
as a rule, only a small storm-sail for running before 
the wind. 'Better to row than reef/ men used to 
say. 'Drive her through it,' we say now. And 
again they used to tell the youngsters: 'A man 
what won't put out his win'ard oar is a man too 
lazy to be trusted wi' a sail at all. Let 'en row !' 
Since then, jibs and mizzens have come into use. 
Drifters, the most conservative of boats, have 
drop-keels to keep them up to the wind, and some 



NEW-FANGLED RIGS 59 

of them have even forsaken for a handier rig the 
old dipping lugsail that is so powerful with a 
leading wind, so tricky to manage in a seaway, and 
so beautifully like a gigantic sea-bird's wing. If 
the old men could return, how scared, how shocked 
they would be to see a drifter, laden with nets, 
drop-keel down, jib, standing lug, and mizzen all 
spread, ploughing out to windward with the spray 
flying right over her. "Tisn't fitty,' they would 
say. Their own aim was a 'comfor'able sort o' 
leisurable craft'; ours is to get there quick. Fish 
were more plentiful in their day. They could 
afford to take their time; they were willing to 
give their labour. The catches those old boats 
used to bring ashore I 

The newer boats are mistrusted by the old 
fishermen who survive — by Benjie, for instance — 
however great their advantages. The quickness 
that they have on the water, as if their centre- 
keel was a pivot to spin on, is an annoyance, 
their wetness in the wind a constant exasperation. 
What did it matter to those old men if, in tack- 
ing, the boat missed stays? They had the wind- 
ward oar out: they rowed her round. Benjie 
sometimes declares that his old craft is still for 
all purposes the best upon the beach — with a 



60 ALONGSHORE i 

little doing to her. It would be hard to argue 
with him that she was not the 'best, once. He 
knows. He used her for forty years, and he 
threatens to fit her out for sea again. Whether 
or no she is the oldest of all the old boats, and 1 
what her name originally was, nobody seems sure. 
The Rover she is called, on account of his having 
roved in her so far and so often, day and night, 
east and west under the cliffs, in search of the 
many things which can be found there by one 
to whom the rocks are as familiar as his native 
streets and alleys. Of late years she has also 
been nicknamed the Fearnaught, because she will 
never go to sea again and therefore has naught 
to fear. Her stern is stove in, and daylight can 
be seen between her strakes. Her sail is rotten, 
her cordage gone, her oars broken, her mast split. 
Her paint, once white, is the colour of a dirty 
sky in thick weather. Everything loose in her — 
bottom-boards, stern-seats, the step even — was 
long since stolen for firewood. Blades of grass 
spring up along her keel. But in Benjie's eyes, 
in his memory rather, she is still seaworthy. One 
of us once said, in chaff, when we were standing 
by ready to haul her up-over the sea-wall, 'Why 
don' 'ee bring out thy sledge, Benjie, or just let 



THE 'ROVER' 61 

her wash away? Her'll never be no good to 
thee, n'eet to nobody else.' 

Benjie let go the cut-rope. 

'No good !' he shouted, raising his voice 
not alone because of the noise the sea was 
making. 'No good! Time you've been half so 
many miles as this yer's carried me, you can 
talk 'bout no good. If I was to do her up her'd 
go farther yet than some o' 'ee's ever been, or's 
likely to go. I tell 'ee I'd rather lose me drifter 
an' all her nets an' gear than hae ort happen to 
this one. Haul away! Haul away, there, an' 
let's get her into safety !' 

Believing what he said, we hauled with a will 
and silently, a little ashamed. If Davy Jones 
were to give him the alternative of losing either 
his drifter or else the Rover, he might be forced 
to let the Rover go, because he depends on the 
drifter for part of his living, whereas the Rover's 
earning days are done. Even then an angry 
defiance of such a hard alternative might cause 
him to send the drifter to Davy Jones and destruc- 
tion, if only by that sacrifice the Rover could be 
saved. For she is the old boat he loves. She 
is as one of his limbs. 'Tis to be hoped she will 
last him out; that he will be spared the loss of 



62 ALONGSHORE 2 

her. And when he himself has to go it will be 
best if a storm arises, if great waves sweep her 
off the beach, carry her out to sea, and grind 
her into chips and splinters too small for 
firewood. Then they will be able to haunt 
the rocks together. Otherwise, firewood she 
will be. 



II 



63 



7 . FISHERMEN'S HOUSES 

It is at school that children get hold of such 
notions : Teuh ! why can't us move into one 
o' they nice little new houses up on land, instead 
o' biding in this yer mucky oV hole?' At first 
it used to make me very fearful of having to 
leave this salty old house, founded on the shingle 
itself, for a prim, cramped, jerry-built box, one of 
two interminable rows, a mile or more from the 
sea. Now I realise better that such chatter is only 
an echo of the reproaches levelled at us by a prog- 
ress-proud generation which will disappear after 
its life of fuss and worry — a life no happier than, 
if so happy as, ours here — leaving the world but 
little different, and men, at heart, the same as ever. 
Fishermen and their habitations have been 
looked down upon, it seems, for a good many 
years. John Leland's Itinerary — that marvellously 
vivid collection of topographical jottings, written 

65 



66 ALONGSHORE n 

down in King Henry VIII. 's time — is full of 
phrases like, 'Newlin ys a poore fischar toune,' 
and, 'The town of Seton is now but a meane thing, 
inhabited by fischar men/ Yet, as if in revenge, 
Leland's sentences have never so living a tone 
as when he is talking about those same fishing 
towns and villages. Who, except an antiquary, 
wants to know that 'In the south isle' of Sonning 
church 'be 2. or 3. Vouesses buried, kinswomen to 
Bisshop of Saresbyri,' or that 'The personage of 
Axminster is impropriate to the chirch of York'? 
'Tis done with; dead and buried; like the Bishop 
of Salisbury's kinswomen. But any day along the 
sea-wall, just such talk as this of Leland's can be 
heard, and ten to one it will interest whosoever 
listens: 'There was begon a fair pere for socour 
of shippelettes at this Bereword [Beer] : but ther 
cam such a tempest a 3. yeres sins as never in 
mynd of men had before was sene in that shore, 
and tare the pere in peaces. . . . By al the north 
se yn Cornewall be sundry crekes, wher as smawle 
fisshers bootes be drawne up to dry land, and yn 
fayr wether the inhabitans fysche with the same. 
At Paddestow haven, Lanant, and S. Yes [Lelant 
and St. Ives], the balinggars and shyppes ar 
saved and kept fro al weders with keyes or peres.' 



CONSERVATISM 67 

As Benjie says to-day: 'My senses! they got 
fine harbours an' fine craft to Cornwall. 'Tis a 
country created, like, for boats and shipping. 
I've a-put in, 'fore now, to Penzance and St. Ives, 
an' an't I a-catched they master-congers off 
Falmouth, here's luck!' 

In the ancient book, the notes on fishermen 
and fishing ports sound the most modern, because 
to put it the other way round, in modern times 
fishermen live in the most ancient manner. They 
depend on that which is changeless in its change- 
ableness, the sea and luck. They have the more 
primitive conservatism of men to whom two 
days are never the same — a conservatism backed 
by the active fatalism (as opposed to the passive 
variety) which comes from the hazards of fishing 
and the sea. Having few things certain in life, 
they hold the more stubbornly to those that are. 
'If the fish be there, us'll hae 'em, an' if they 
bain't us won't. That feeling they carry home. 
'What will be, will be; 'tis the way o'it, an' us 
can't help o'it; you can but plug out and do 
your best.' That is commonly their philosophy. 
Therefore they stay in the oldest houses, speak 
the oldest forms of dialect (among themselves), 
keep to their customs and their own rig, and, 



68 ALONGSHORE n 

indeed, preserve themselves against odds that 
would kill off most other people. They rub 
along, as they put it. 

Go where you will — to Folkestone, St. Ives, 
Brixham, Clovelly, or across the water to Boulogne, 
Le Portel, and the other northern French ports — 
the fishing quarters have all a close resemblance. 
They differ as much from putrid slums as from 
those modern dwellings which are designed in 
their entirety beforehand, on paper, and into 
which families are tipped like fish into barrels. 
Most people nowadays have to grow into their 
houses; fishermen's houses have grown to them, 
and in so doing have become humanized. They 
are higgledy-piggledy, up and down, huddled and 
patched; their roadways, or, as is often the case, 
their stepways, are narrow; and they have out- 
houses stuck upon them wherever possible; for 
fishermen do not like storing gear in their front 
bedrooms, though many are obliged to do so, and 
many's the bride that has thrown her wedding 
garments upon a pile of fishy herring-nets. 

Fishermen are obliged to live near their boats, 
seeing they never know what hour of the day or 
night they may be called out. When gear grows 
old, they had always rather make shift than get 



" HOUSES THAT FIT 69 

new, and being seamen, they have usually the 
handiness to do it. How often is one told, on 
remarking that a rope, or a strake, or a spar, 
ought to be replaced: 'Ah, let it bide, let it 
break! 'Tis different wi' the likes o'us from 
what 'tis wi' gen'lemen's boats. When they sees 
summut be wore, or a rope's losted its nature, 
they orders a new 'un; but the likes o'us, us 
lets it bide till summut carries away, an' then us 
knows 'tis done for, an' nort more's to say about 
itP A certain tenderness, too, for that which is 
old and has served well puts out of mind the 
possibilities of danger from breakage. 

As it is with boats and gear, so it is with 
buildings; and hence it is that fishermen's houses 
are huddled, patched, and old, and above all 
picturesque. They fit the men around whom 
they have grown, and whose harbours they are, 
as the placid, dirty, walled-in, sheet of water 
down below is a harbour for the larger craft, or the 
littered beach outside a berth for the little boats; 
and, continually buffeted by the salt cleanly winds, 
they fall to pieces without, as it were, ever be- 
coming rotten. In house, the shipshape neatness 
of the mariner tradition disputes power with the 
unorderliness of fishermen, who, in whatever 



70 ALONGSHORE n 

leisurely fashion they prepare for work or lounge 
about between whiles, almost always set to work 
in a hurry. For if you mean to 'brave the sea 
in a big ship, you may take your time; but if 
you have to outwit the sea, in small boats, then 
the sea's time must be yours, and unless you hasten 
you cannot follow it up. 



8. SEMAPHORE 

Semaphore is a longshore baby. 

Two halves do not make a whole for Sema- 
phore; she is half her father's, half her mother's, 
and half mine. She was born in my writing- 
room, where there is a large flat white bed, 
usually piled up with brain-babies in the shape 
of books. Susan Jim declares that she has never 
had a baby in such a draughty room, and I can 
quite believe it, especially when the wind is blow- 
ing half a gale from the sou'west and salty drops 
ooze through the rotten old window frame. The 
sound of the sea fills the room like the scent of 
flowers; a scent that flows and ebbs with each 
wave outside; but Semaphore, although she is a 
fisherman's daughter — his thirteenth child count- 
ing the dead ones — and as such is in a sense an 
offspring of the sea — Semaphore must have heard 
her grannie's chackle long before the sea's voice 

7i 



72 ALONGSHORE n 

soaked into her consciousness; for the month 
was February, and she was probably born with 
the window shut. 

The Polar Eskimos hold that each human 
being consists of a soul, and a body, and a name. 
Jim, the OP Man, and Susan Jim gave Sema- 
phore her body and called her soul unto it. Her 
name, that part of her, is mine. When I returned 
from the exile into which her coming drove me, 
my kitchen corner, that used to contain boots and 
guernseys and socks for darning, was occupied 
by a cradle and a squeak. Over the cradle, 
which rocked in bumps on the uneven stone floor, 
was hung a line of tiny many-coloured gar- 
ments. At intervals, being hungry, the squeak 
squeaked. A crazy patch-work quilt heaved 
feebly. (The heave is less gentle nowadays.) 
Two tiny red arms waved themselves about; 
jerked and waved. 'Twas like a semaphore — 
with a foghorn attached. 'What a semaphore 
of a baby!' I remarked. 'Semifore! SemiforeP 
cried the elder children. She possesses other 
names of course. Had I been asked to act as 
her godfather. . . . But girls only require one 
godfather, and among Semaphore's people, what- 
ever the Church may say about parents not being 



ii NOSES ! 73 

fit godparents for their own children, a man is 
thought ill of if he will not 'stand up to' his 
child at the font; the implication being that he 
does not believe the child his. So, without opposi- 
tion, Semaphore was christened Grace Kathleen, 
or something of the sort. But Semaphore is her 
proper name. When, after a night at sea or 
mackerel hooking at peep o' day, I 'go up over' 
in the afternoon to 'put away an hour,' then am 
I kept awake by shouts of 'Semifore ! Semifore ! 
Dirty bundle!' (A term of endearment here- 
about.) 'Woo-ah-h-h ! Woo-ah-h-h-h ! Kiss 
me then. Semi-fooore !' How can one be very 
bad tempered at that? It is the name of Sema- 
phore which makes her partly mine. 

She has another link with the Eskimos. I 
don't know why one wants to kiss babies. One 
does. I did; but, being a bachelor, failed to 
attain to the full deed. Semaphore and I touched 
noses merely. She was delighted. I remembered 
that in a book I read when I was a little boy 
the Eskimos were said to greet one another by 
rubbing noses. 'Noses, Semaphore ! Noses !' 
She understood; and now when we kneel before 
her while she is squat on her mother's lap, she 
smiles suddenly, as if she had recollected a 



74 ALONGSHORE n 

pleasant dream, bends forward graciously, and 
just touches our noses with hers, like a leaf in 
a light air; then buries her face in her mother's 
breast and gurgles. If 'gentry-people' take 
notice of her upon the beach, and chatter baby- 
talk for a kiss, she refuses with kicks and head- 
turnings and digs of her small sharp nails; but 
afterwards, relenting, she inclines her nose 
towards theirs, and the smile she does it 
with, sly humorous smile, enchants them 
altogether. 

Everybody's baby possesses at least one good 
quality which raises it far above anybody else's 
baby whatsoever. Defects and superiorities are, 
indeed, the same thing in babies, and the tragedy 
of their growing up is the way their little exhibi- 
tions of intelligence become, without change in 
nature, big exhibitions of naughtiness. That 
amusing touchiness of yours, Semaphore, will 
one day be simply wicked temper. Your fine 
appetite will be greediness in a year or two's 
time, and when you make a wry face at food 
you don't like, your mother, instead of cudd- 
ling you to her, will exclaim, 'Cawdy little 
cat! You shan't hae nort.' Sic transit gloria 
infantiae. 



H HER TWO SUPERIORITIES 75 

Semaphore, however, has two superiorities 
which can hardly age into defects. She is extra- 
ordinarily sharp and lively; for do we not pet 
her and play with her and talk to her every 
moment her eyes are open, and sometimes when 
they are not? And — second superiority — she 
always wakes up smiling. If she is left smiling 
too long, then certainly she smiles no longer; but 
she has awakened smiling, anyhow. Should I be 
first down and take upstairs the morning cup o' 
tay, it is Semaphore receives me, smiling up from 
betwixt her parents, blithely awake some seconds 
before her mother has finished yawning and 
digging the OP Man in the ribs. Be the window- 
blind up or down, she catches one's eye before 
anything else in the room — before her father's 
weathered red face, or her mother's hair stream- 
ing across the pillow, or the bag of family bis- 
cuits on the bedside table. There is something 
peculiarly proper and beautiful in the sight of 
a little child snuggled in bed between its father 
and mother, the fruit of their union still hanging, 
as it were, with its bloom upon it, to the parent 
tree, and not unaffected for good, perhaps, in 
after-life by the longer proximity. As for the 
risk of over-laying, shall not those who gave 



76 ALONGSHORE " 

life sometimes also crush it away? We are too 
squeamish over death, too neglectful of life. 
Separations come all too soon. 

Semaphore has had her illnesses. But that is 
enough about that. I would have some heavenly 
drill-sergeant come every day and give her the 
order, 'As yer wuz ! Stand heasy !' I would 
like to see her, still a baby, flapping about naked 
in the wash-tub, this day twenty years. She will 
be thinking of babies of her own then. One 
understands why pictures of the Holy Family 
have such a hold upon the imagination of man- 
kind when Semaphore is on her mother's lap and 
her father comes in, all wet from sea, and kisses 
her, and licks her face like a great dog, and she 
laughs aloud and drags him to her by the hair. 
The mother is so full of patience and the 
consciousness of power, the father of eagerness 
and the exercise of power, and the child contains 
in small so much of God knows what, that every 
attitude, every movement of the three is at once 
graceful, cosy and world-wide; delicate and 
strong. 'Where's Joe?' some one asks. Sema- 
phore looks towards the fender where the cat 
sleeps. 'Where's Jim?' She turns round to 
her father. 'Where's Dad?' She smiles across 



n VAIN WISHES 77 

at me! Were it not that her eyes are sea-blue, 
like her father's, instead of muddy grey, like 
mine, and all her gestures echoes of his, gossips 
would no doubt be saying that she was mine. I 
wish she were. 



9 . THEY THERE KIDS 

<D*** an > ***** t hey there ****** kids— that 
ever I should be so wicked as to say so! They 
comes an' rides about the boats, an' don't take a 
bit o' notice o'ee when you speaks to 'em. Aye ! 
answers o'ee back wi' their chake, they do, how- 
ever civil you tells 'em o'it. Pounds' wuth o' 
damage they does. Lookse! There they be! 
At it again, after all I've a-said to 'em. Git out 
o'it, you ****** little ******* (God forgie me 
for talking like it!), or, by ****** ? pU pi c k u p a 
rope's-end an' lay it about thee till thee casn' sit 
down for a week; an' then thee ca'st go'n tell thy 
father, an' I'll settle wi' he, too, if 'er wants it. 
Now, then ! None o' your chake ! As for thic 
there Mr. Silverpoll. . . . Fair knock-out he is! 
If I was his father. . . . But, there, 'tisn't no use 
saying ort. Might so well talk to Blowhole Rock 
as to they there kids. They got the advantage 

78 



ii 'GIT 'OME!' 79 

o'ee. Thee casn't treat 'em cruel. They be but 
chil'ern. . . .' 

That's it. They have an advantage over us 
which, whether knowingly or not (I believe they 
have an inkling), they use to the full. 

'We are but little children weak, 
Not born to any high estate!' 

they as good as say. 'You can't hae the heart to 
wallop us, 'cause you'm so much bigger'n us be; 
you could beat our brains out easy, like you'm 
always telling. An' 'tisn't no good thinking we'm 
going to pay for what us breaks, 'cause us an't got 
'nuff 'ap'nys for to do it wiv. 'Sides, if you was 
to hurt us, you'd hae to have a shindy wi' our 
father, an' you an't got no call for that. He an't 
done 'ee no harm; you an't got nort against he. 
My father'd 'at thee into a jelly, if he was to start 
on 'ee. You wouldn't like for to see 'en beat 
your chil'ern, n'eet your dog nuther. No, you 
wouldn't — not come to it. Us be going to play 
see-saw wi' your little punt d'rec'ly your back's 
turned — 'fore 'tis, if you like. Git 'ome wi' thee 
talk 'bout stove in ! Us have played in boats ever 
since us can mind, an' us an't never see'd one stove 
in. Come on, you kids ! let's go'n squat down 



8o ALONGSHORE n 

'longside his stupid ol' boat. 'Er can't say nort 
to thic; an' then us can slip inside o'en when he's 
gone across beach. You take thiccy paddle. . . . 
Look out! Coo'h! how the gert poop do swear I 
Sounds so bad. P'raps us had better git 'long.' 

Git 'long they do — for ten minutes, or until 
more kids arrive. One could kill them will- 
ingly were it possible to bring them back to 
life before nightfall. (Fancy a child rising from 
the dead to find it was just bedtime!) As 'tis, in 
this world of headwinds, there is nothing to do 
but cuss. And it does not follow that a man who 
swears at the kids dislikes children. Rather the 
contrary; for if he did they would give him and 
his boats a wide berth; whereas, if at the back of 
his mind he has a fondness for them, the wise little 
scoundrels get to know it, hang around him and 
his boats, and torment him the more. Still less 
does it follow that his remarks corrupt their youth- 
ful communications. They can cuss as well as he, 
among themselves; I have overheard them many 
a time; good manners demand merely that they 
should not cuss before their elders. It is one of 
the very first things they learn at school, if not 
before. Only the other day, a golden-headed 
little baby of my acquaintance was being fed at 



n THE BABE'S EXAMPLE 81 

her mother's breast, and because everything was 
not to her liking, she drew back, looked across at 
me, and rapped out, as one might do when a boot- 
lace breaks: 'Damn!' Quite charmingly she said 
it (never mind from whom she caught the word), 
and a proper little kid she is; game to the back- 
bone, uncommonly strong in the squall. You 
may think what you like about her language: if 
you had to live with her — eat with her, play with 
her, rest with her, sleep in the next room, and take 
her out in boats — you would at any moment rather 
she cussed a wee than started a hullaballoo. I 
would, anyhow. And if babes and sucklings set 
us elders the example. . . . 

And give us the provocation! At the begin- 
ning of August, when the boats are lying along 
the beach, new-varnished for the holiday-season 
and washed out for a busy day, with the oars 
lying neatly together in them, and all the ropes and 
sails in order, down come the kids. Down they 
come to the Front in a chattering swarm, more 
regular than any shoals of fish, most like a flock 
of birds collecting for migration : tousled, joyous, 
and turbulent; boys on the look-out for a chance 
of getting to sea; small girls in charge of little 
ones, little ones dragging babies. We try to get 

G 



82 ALONGSHORE " 

rid of them tactfully. 'Git home,' we say, 'an' 
tell thee mother to wash thee face!' Poor 
woman, she has probably done it once or twice 
already, since they got up, and wants to hurry on 
with her housework. The kids look, taking our 
measure. But they don't go. They mean to get 
down to the beach, they and their babies, and 
bundles, and perambulators, and go-carts, and 
slices of bread-and-butter, and penny bottles of 
raspberry champagne. We, who wish them further, 
have to help them. For what can we do when a 
small girl, single-handed, bumpety-bumps a go- 
cart, containing a baby, half-way down the sea- 
wall steps, gets stuck, and stops frightened, with 
the baby wobbling perilously in its swaying go- 
cart? Drag them up, and they'll only try again. 
There's nothing for it but to pick up baby, go- 
cart and all, and carry them down to the beach. 

Then if we should go 'in across up over' for a 
drink before the thirsty work of the day begins, 
or if we put early to sea, leaving boats ashore, the 
kids have their chance. In one boat will be a 
baby playing with pebbles, each of which will have 
to be picked out separately by hand. Along the 
stern-seats of another, which may happen to over- 
hang the water, ready shoved-down for a 'fright,' 



ii PAINT AND VARNISH 83 

a row of laughing girls will be seated, splashing 
their naked legs in the sea, splashing the boat as 
well with water and with sand. See-saw is played 
by rocking a boat from side to side on its keel. 
Boys will be rowing on dry land, to the great 
destruction of paddle-blades; or they will be using 
feather-weight sculls to recover from the sea their 
toy ships and the boats' ways that they have 
chucked into the water; or else they will be push- 
ing and straining to shove off the lightest of 
the punts. Should they succeed, that boat will 
earn no money for a few hours. Paint and varnish 
is scratched with hob-nail boots, sails sat upon, 
gear trampled over. Rowlocks, lines, footing- 
sticks, all sorts of things are scattered abroad. 
What a festival it is! The kids don't care; and, 
indeed, why should they? Long before they came 
into the world the boats were on the beach. They 
found them there, a resource to be made use of, a 
means of amusement waiting for them; just as 
they found the sea and the land, daylight to play 
in, and darkness to sleep away. Boats which they 
neither made nor bought are to them simply so 
much material for enterprise, like goldfields, or 
fisheries, or untilled soil to men. And if they do 
damage. . . . Do not we grown-up children 



84 ALONGSHORE n 

trample down something beautiful and valuable 
with every step forward in our own belauded 
enterprises? 

Meanwhile, in some of their mysterious young 
minds, so clear yet so obscure, like spring water 
standing in shadow, a process is beginning which 
will end only with their lives. The sea is laying 
hold of them, tightening her grip, asserting her 
authority over seafaring blood. She is picking 
and choosing among those happy-go-lucky kids; 
and whom she chooses she never really lets go. 
If she cannot have their service afloat she still can 
wreck with cross-purposes their lives ashore. Their 
imaginations will for ever be running away to sea 
if they themselves don't. When they had best go 
straight on they will look back to her call. They 
will suffer an interior divorce between what must 
be done and what they have a hankering to do. 
How many ineffectual land-lubbers, men never 
prosperous, or prone to decay in prosperity, would 
have made good seamen had they been allowed 
their youthful way? 

Mr. Silverpoll — the sea has laid hold on him 
firmly enough. No more than three or four years 
ago he was a chubby, blue-eyed, flaxen-haired baby 
— 'Dada's baby-boy,' as his father used to sing. 



ii A FAIR TERRIFIER 85 

To-day he is already a fisher-lad, growing lanky, 
and strong at the oar. Then, he used to beg in a 
most pitiful whine: 'Dad, will 'ee let me go out 
in the boat? Will 'ee take me 'long with 'ee? 
Dad? Dad?' Now, he asks confidently: 'Will 
'ee come an' help me to shove off, please?' And 
to sea he goes, all on his own, arriving back just 
in time to snatch up a hunch of bread-and-butter 
and race off to school. 'A proper slammick, the 
boy's getting !' says his mother; but little he cares 
about his clothes, his boots, or his hair, which the 
sun has browned and crisped, so long as he can 
get afloat; and punishment he disarms with fishing 
talk after the style of an ancient mariner. In 
so short a time he has grown out of all knowl- 
edge, has found his feet; or, as perhaps one 
should say, he has taken the tiller into his own 
hand. 

But during that time of quick growth, after 
his remove from the infants' to the boys' school, he 
was well called a fair terrifier; the worst of all they 
there kids from the boat-owners', if not from the 
sea's, point of view. Nothing was safe. Among 
kids in mischief on the beach he was ringleader. 
'You'm a fisherman's son,' I used to say to him. 
'You ought to keep the other kids out of the 



86 ALONGSHORE n 

boats, not in them.' He would look up thought- 
fully and defiantly, would look down, would go 
away — or wait till I was gone away. 

Nevertheless, the idea stuck in his mind; he 
realised that a fisherman's boy was not the same as 
a kid from up on land. When a boat came in, 
instead of grabbing the nearest plaything that 
caught his eye, he began to try and do something 
useful; to put a way under the bows or to string 
up fish; and though pushed aside time after time 
for bungling and told to get out of the light, he 
would turn up as smiling as ever to seize the cut- 
rope of the next boat in. At sea, he left off be- 
having like a passenger. He looked round for a 
job to do, and, if there was none, sat quiet. He 
even cleaned up a boat before he had finished 
being seasick. In house and along the beach his 
questions followed one about: 'Be 'ee going to 
sea? Bain't 'ee going fishing t'night? Well, be 
'ee going t'morrow, then ? Can I come? Coo'h! 
you promised!' 

This year he took it into his head to shove off 
by himself whenever he found a boat near enough 
to the water's edge. Then he would row to the 
other side of Broken Rocks and take aboard several 
of his schoolfellows. A boat would be wanted. 



n SILVERPOLL'S COMPACT 87 

'Where's the Nancy T 'Who's got the Sweet- 
brier? we would ask. 

'Why, there 'er is! Casn' see? There, by 
the outside mark-buoy. Thic there Silverpoll an' 
half a dozen o'em ! I'd gie 'en a darn good 
lacing if he was a boy o' mine. . . .' 

'He shan't hae the boats,' his father would say 
angrily. 'Parcel o' kids like they to take a boat 
when they'm minded !' 

But how otherwise was Silverpoll to learn to 
row, and to fit himself for a profession that needs 
to be started early, if at all? 

Finally, against orders, he went down west 
one evening, and a fresh breeze sprang up from 
the east. He had to be fetched home. After the 
boat was hauled up he was given his lacing with 
the rope's-end. Face downwards on the beach, he 
wept bitterly, and for nearly a week he hardly 
set foot in a boat. Yet he had to go to sea; he 
was certain to do so one way or another, and 
better openly than sullenly or slily. 

So a compact was made to the effect that if he 
was shoved off every day when the weather was 
fit and a boat free, he would take care not to 
sneak off without asking. That compact, after a 
preliminary breakage or two, just to test it, he has 



88 ALONGSHORE h 

been man enough to keep. Entertainments, tea- 
iights, picnics, and living pictures have as little 
attraction for him as Sunday-school. Out of 
school is out to sea. Where he got his style in 
rowing, I don't know; it came natural, I suppose. 
They make the boat travel, those kids. 

When last I shoved them off I asked another, 
a bigger, boy whether or no he was going to 
jump in. 'If Silverpoll will take me,' replied the 
bigger boy. 

Which means that Silverpoll is in fact and deed 
the skipper of his craft. 

Two magnets are dragging those longshore 
kids two ways, towards the sea and towards the 
land. Prudence, money, parents, love, friendship 
— to say nothing of cowardice, laziness, comfort, 
and a score of other considerations — all throw in 
their weight increasingly against the sea. But the 
sea calls: 



Now the great winds shoreward blow, 
Now the salt tides seaward flow; 
Now the wild white horses play, 
Champ and chafe and toss in the spray. 
Children dear, let us away! 
This way, this way! 

And some of the children hear; and time and 



SOMETHING DOING TO SEA 89 

again the sea wins. I confess to a feeling of 
triumph whenever the sea wins. 

It is as certain as anything can be that Silverpoll 
will become a seaman. If he is put to work on 
land, back he will go to the sea. (Perhaps that 
vast floating machine-shop, the Navy, will seduce 
him.) There is a tale told here of a good fisher- 
man, who, when a lad, was told to get regular 
work on land. 'You will have to come before 
breakfast, and clean the boots and knives, and 
carry up the coal/ said the gentleman to whom he 
applied; 'and you must be ready to run errands, 
or help in the house and garden. . . .' 

'Yes, sir; yes, sir!' the lad burst out. 'But 
what about it, sir? S'pose there's something 
doing out to sea? What about that? Can't 
come, sir.' 

S'pose there's something doing out to sea? The 
lad was right. That is the cry of the longshore, 
where men live upon land with their eyes upon 
the sea. 

S'pose there's something doing out to sea, you 
kids! 



io. FRIGHTS 

Frights are two-legged fish. When a lady who 
is walking down to a boat with the intention of 
hiring it hears one fisherman call out to another: 
'Dick, there's a fright for thee there!' she is apt 
to look a little startled. It has to be explained to 
her that fright is a way of pronouncing freight. 
But I don't think most ladies like it, after that. 

The movements of visitors are so mysterious, 
and yet so regular, that were they not human 
beings, more or less accountable for their actions, 
we should certainly say that their comings and 
goings were as purely a matter of instinct as the 
migrations of birds and fish. Once we had an 
archbishop staying here. He used to come out 
and take the sea-air about noon. Straightway, it 
seemed, from every side-street and almost every 
house, would appear a clergyman, and as the 
archbishop promenaded so they would promenade 

90 



m ARCHBISHOPS 91 

too, passing and repassing under the august eye, 
until you might have thought that the earth was 
a heaven-bound ship, and our little Front the 
bridge of it, crowded with sky-pilots. An ob- 
server from another world, who knew not our 
civilisation, might well have imagined them to 
have been under the sway of some irresistible 
instinct; and perhaps they were. Or had he been 
scientific, he would have made a note somewhat 
to this effect. 'Human Migrations. Movements 
of the clergy. Curates attracted by archbishops. 
Query: Does the attraction reside in his face, his 
hat, his gait, or his gaiters? Is its nature spiritual 
or temporal, psychopathic or radio-telegraphic? 
Mem.: Procure an archbishop for vivisection and 
subsequent dissection.' 

Visitors are here to-day and gone to-morrow. 
They are not; and suddenly they are. Besides 
that great permanency the sea they flit like 
butterflies. Men say along the beach: 'Aye! 
They bain't here, an' they bain't coming, I tell 
thee; not like they have a-done. They've got 
they there motors to play about wi\ an' more 
o'em's going further west, to Cornwall. 'Tisn't 
like 't used to be, an' it never will be again. I've 
a-seed it this time o' year when they was mazed 



92 ALONGSHORE n 

for boats an' would snap up any oP craft along 
the beach. Now they wants 'em varnished. Ah ! 
times be altered.' 

Soon, of an afternoon, the 'bus comes down 
from the station piled up with luggage, and a line 
of cabs races across the Front, each one containing 
people who gaze at the sea with a happy anxiety. 
'There thee a't ! There they be ! They'm com- 
ing in. There's thic chap — do 'ee mind? — what 
used to go to sea 'long wi' me an' carry away all 
the mackerel us catched. . . .' 

"Twas my fright, by rights. They went to 
sea long wi' me first, only I was to sea the second 
time when they come'd down to the boats, an' 
thee wast here ; an' then they continued, like, 'long 
wi' thee.' 

'Well, 't don't much matter that I sees, not 
wi' they sort that hauls an' tears abroad your 
lines, an' then carries away all the fish you catches, 
wi'out giving o'ee anything extra. What do they 
want wi' six dozen macker, unless they'm fish- 
mongers or lets 'em rot? Anyhow, the people's 
beginning to come in, sure 'nuff.' 

Shortly afterwards they come out and walk 
along the front, still rather townish in clothes and 
manner and complexion, greeting acquaintances if 



n A SLEEPY TURN-OUT 93 

they are old visitors, asking the funniest questions 
if they are new-comers, and all of them worrying 
about the weather. Sometimes, when we tell them 
it is likely to be foul, they appear to be offended 
with us. As if we could help it! They have 
been let loose from their cities for so short a time 
that indeed we rather pity them. We like to see 
them getting sunburnt. 

As with visitors in general, so with frights — 
but more so. I sometimes think of them as spray 
thrown at us haphazard by a seething sea of 
humanity in the interior of the country. Fine 
days they neglect. Foul days, when they are sure 
to be wet and sea-sick, they want to go out, and 
often have to be told that 'tisn't fit. If the 
steamer has gone away crowded on a popular 
trip, we know why the boats lie idle. When a 
private boat, resplendent with paint and varnish 
and brass fittings, shoves gaily off and suggests to 
a score of people that they might be on the water, 
we can understand that too. But there are subtler 
suggestions at work. We may sit on the sea-wall 
half a fine day, yarning, yawning, kicking our 
heels, and remarking, 'Sleepy sort o' a turn-out, 
this! Makes 'ee tireder 'n doing ort.' Then 
suddenly some one asks for a boat; others follow; 



94 ALONGSHORE n 

boat-owners run along the front searching for 
men to take frights out, and in half an hour every 
boat is off the beach. 'If thee's want to do ort 
frighting, thee's got to follow it up. There's 
never no knowing when they'm coming down to 
the boats all of a heap an' a tear, an' thee casn't 
tell who they'm coming down to. All they wants 
then is to get to sea quick, else they shunts. 
That's what makes a fellow rush about like he 
do, for all we knows it don't get 'en no for'arder: 
in the end. Aye ! an' when thee's come in for a 
bit o' grub, even in rough weather, p'raps that 
five minutes '11 be the means o' not seeing some 
one what'd go to sea every fine day for a month. 
I tell thee, in frighting, thee's got to work for 
work. "Lazy fellows !" some o'em says when 
they sees 'ee waiting wi' thy hands in thy pockets. 
But when they comes down to go to sea an* 
can't find no lazy fellows waiting for 'em, then 
they'm annoyed an' accuses 'ee o' making a fortune 
quick.' 

Why people who are here only for the day 
should frequent that part of the beach which is 
near the main street is fairly obvious. But it is 
not so easy to explain why certain men should be 
chosen by omnibus parties, nor why some frights 



it FRIGHTS VERSUS FISH 95 

should prefer a talkative, amusing man, some a 
young man, others an outspoken old man who 
orders them about; some a man who can do the 
sea-going flunkey well, and some few a man who 
can tell them silly scientific stuff about weather 
systems and the sea, when their holiday-making, 
or rather holiday-attempting, minds would be far 
better occupied with the beauty and joy of it all, 
and only a poet could tell them what they ought 
to want to know. The dividing-line between 
their going out with anybody, or only with the 
man and boat of their choice, is a very fine one. 
A little gentle persuasion sometimes. . . . 

Frights have this advantage over fish: their 
greater regularity. Fishing, bad though it has 
become, is still as good as frighting, and probably 
better if keenly followed up; but fish may fail 
altogether for a season or two, whereas the shoals 
of visitors always arrive at their usual time; and 
that is a consideration not to be overlooked by 
men who have families to house, feed, and clothe, 
and no reserves of money to stay them through 
the bad seasons. They can hardly be blamed for 
refusing to face the greater gamble, for adopting 
the safe, the middling course. And thus the fish 
have their revenge on fishermen — an insidious 



96 ALONGSHORE « 

long-armed revenge; for boating seldom breeds 
the men that fishing does. Here, however, fishing 
is still kept up — by some men right into the 
frighting season — until the toil of fishing by night 
and boating by day compels them to leave off one 
or the other; and, if they possess several pleasure 
boats, it is the fishing has to go. We are proud 
of the fact that we have no boatmen on the beach; 
only fishermen who do boating. We do not 
tout for frights, or run after people along the 
Front, badgering them to go to sea, as they do in 
some towns that we could name. We wait to be 
hired, like barristers and physicians. Frighting is 
the fisherman's form of pot-boiling. 

It is, of course, a comparatively non-productive 
kind of labour. Money changes hands just as it 
does in fishing, but no wealth, in the shape of fish- 
food from the sea, is at the same time added to 
the resources of the country. (Yet only a shallow 
economy reckons as labour in vain the production 
of pleasure and health.) And it cannot be pre- 
tended that frighting is so independent and worthy 
a job as fishing. There are more misunderstandings 
over a week's frighting than over a whole season's 
fishing. At its best, even with those who may be 
called personal friends aboard, one has to a certain 



FLUNKEYISM 97 

extent to do the flunkey. One holds one's tongue 
for no better reason than because one has to earn 
one's pay. My own first fright has amused me ever 
since. It was a young man from up-country, of 
the smart, cute, commercial sort; a decent enough 
fellow in his way, no doubt; but he didn't know 
how to treat a hired man. Therefore I sat on 
him severely, with my best brand of dignity, and 
before we came ashore the unfortunate young man 
was calling me sir. 'Good night, sir,' he said, 
handing over his couple of shillings. . . . But 
that sort of thing doesn't do. I've had to learn 
better since. In a boat, sometimes, a sudden gust 
of hilarity strikes me, on realising that, like those 
horrid children who no longer exist outside old 
people's recollections, I have to be seen and not 
heard, and wait to speak until I am spoken to. I 
burst out laughing at myself. The frights think 
I am grinning at them. And the fat's in the fire 
again. 

To do the flunkey really well is a work of art 
and artfulness, worthy of respect; for how else 
should authors, painters, and musicians be respected, 
who, except they ignore their public altogether, are 
brain-flunkeys? Indeed, we are all of us flunkeys 
in one fashion or another. Flunkeyism does not 

H 



98 ALONGSHORE n 

lie in the non-productiveness of the labour, or in 
service, or in menial attendance ; there is no shame 
in acting lackey to those we love, because we love 
them. Flunkeyism is a suppression of personality 
for pay. It is a negation of living, a slap in the 
face of life — a slap we have most of us to give in 
order to live at all. It cannot come to an end till 
each man works for love of his labour and his fel- 
lowmen, and loves his neighbour as himself. 

There is, about frighting, a give-and-take be- 
tween hirer and hired which redeems it from pure 
flunkeyism. Whether paid or not, the boatman 
must for safety's sake remain skipper of his craft; 
yours to command ashore, in command afloat. 
Under his care, as into the hands of a specialist, 
the fright must place itself, and usually is prepared 
to do so. Hectoring does not do with boatmen 
who are also fishermen. Some people will try to 
beat the prices down, forgetting the wear and tear 
of boats on an open beach, and the number of 
months they lie idle. A few frights have been 
known to take tea with them, to eat it on a beach 
with their boatman sitting by, and never to offer 
him a crumb. But mainly they are kind, in 
intention at all events; for they are on a little 
adventure which tends to make men kin; and if 



ii BOATMEN PHILOSOPHERS 99 

they err it is commonly through ignorance, through 
assuming too readily that their boatman is the 
ignorant party, before whom they pass in a 
straggling procession, showing themselves up to 
him, away from the rut of their customary sur- 
roundings and habits, and under the self-revealing 
conditions of sea-sickness, alarm, or frank enjoy- 
ment. Small wonder that most boatmen are 
philosophers in their way! Small wonder that 
curious sea-friendships crop up, which belong only 
to the neighbourhood of boats, and do not extend 
into the ordinary land-lives either of the fright or 
their man! For, as a rule, we who take them 
to sea know next to nothing of them, neither their 
occupations nor even their names. We call them 
by their lodgings : 'No. 3 Seaview wants a boat at 
two.' Or else, if we think enough of them, we 
give them nicknames: 'Bald- Pate,' 'White-Face,' 
'Bobs' (on account of a likeness to Lord Roberts), 
'Thic fine piece,' 'The Spider-Crab,' 'OF Jelly 
Fish.' They come, impressing themselves upon 
us because they are means towards a livelihood; 
they are judged from our angle; and then they 
go. Sometimes they say good-bye, and sometimes 
they don't, to us who have had their lives in our 
hands. Old ladies, there are, so drawn to the sea 



ioo ALONGSHORE n 

that they cannot keep off it, so infirm that they 
have to be carried down and up the beach. If 
the boat capsized. . . . Courageous old ladies! 
Admirable frights! They've got to sit still in 
the boat. 



ii. AN OLD MAN'S TALE 

Daddy Pearn, Uncle Henry Oborne, and Granfie 
Coombe were sitting in a row along one of the 
seats on the sea-wall. While they talked of old 
times they watched the new — that is to say, 
Granfie Coombe and Uncle Henry watched, and 
both reported what they saw to blind Daddy 
Pearn, who sat quite still, his tall body bent like 
a twisted bow, his chin resting on the handle of 
his stick, and his long, pointed nose — from which 
his face had, as it were, wasted away — so drooping 
downwards that it seemed as if it would soon 
lengthen out into a second prop for his grey shaky 
head. 

Close inshore a fleet of racing dinghies of the 
most modern design, brightly varnished, and with 
white, silken sails, darted about on the water, 
heeled over to every cat's-paw of wind, and spun 
round like tops upon their centre-keels. Further 

IOI 



102 ALONGSHORE n 

out, where the off-shore breeze blew truer, several 
Ware trawlers sailed stiffly across the bay to their 
western fishing-grounds. With their dark, belly- 
ing lugsails of an ancient cut, their beaminess, their 
high freeboard and their black and leaden paint, 
they looked like craft not so much from another 
fishing village as from a bygone age. 

'Do 'ee mind thic time, Daddy,' Uncle Henry 
was saying, 'when you an' me went down 'long 
wi' the boat-nets an' catched gert lobsters so fast 
as us could haul, an' it come'd on to blow, an' us 
pretty nigh losted the lot ?' 

Granfie Coombe, who, not having been a fisher- 
man, was soon tired of fishing yarns, deliberately 
turned away to watch the dinghies. 'There!' 
he exclaimed, pointing. 'Did 'ee see thic one go 
about? 'Tis wonderful how they gets they boats 
to sail nowadays.' 

'What, boy?' retorted Uncle Henry Oborne. 
'They things o' skimming dishes !' 

'I an't never seen they dinghies they tells so 
much about.' Daddy Pearn simply mentioned it 
as a fact. 'They wasn't come about when I had 
my sight.' 

'Ah!' said Uncle Henry. 'They Waremen's 
the lads for me. You can sail somewhere in 



ii THE BRIDE'S RETURN' 103 

one o' they, not round and round buoys. But 
Ware isn't what 't used to be, nuther. Why, I 
can mind when there was pigs running about 
among the boats on Ware beach, eating up the 
fish offal what nobody couldn't sell. Gert, flop- 
eared, evil-looking brutes they was, an' savage; 
but they did keep the beach sweet. Com- 
memorated in a song, they pigs was, printed on one 
o' they there ol' broadsheets what used to be sold 
for a penny; an' a blind man used to come along 
an' sing it. I forgets what 'twas called. There 
ain't no such songs now. . . .' 

' The Bride's Return, it was called,' said Daddy 
Pearn. 

That's it.' 

'I was to Ware when it happened.' 

Daddy Pearn straightened himself up. He 
turned towards the other two old men, waving his 
stick in the air. And while he talked, speaking, 
as it were, out of the old times, it was the dinghies 
that looked strange upon the sea, not the black 
Ware trawlers. 

'I was there,' he said. 'What do 'ee think o' 
that? I was working for the same bride's father 
up to Ware. 'Bout ten year old I must have 
been; 'twas my first place, afore I took to the, 



io 4 ALONGSHORE " 

fishing. Aye ! a proper hard man farmer was, 
but he knew how to grow good crops — right on 
the top o' Ware Head, where the land an't been 
tilled this fifty year. 

'Ruth, the farmer's maid, was sea-struck, like 
I've a-heard say they gets stage-struck nowadays. 
Her'd be out on the end o' Ware Head both day 
an' night, watching the boats in an' out o' the 
Roads, till the fishermen named her Ware Beacon, 
an' said if her watched 'em out 'twould bring 'em 
luck. An' it did: I've a-proved it. "Here, 
boy," the farmer'd call me. "Go'n tell the maid 
that if her isn't in to dinner be time I've finished, 
there's none for her." An' there wasn't nuther, 
though maybe he'd linger a bit over it. 

'By'm-bye her took to going down to beach 
for to see if any o' the pigs there was fit for 
farmer to buy an' saltin — so her'd say — an,' 
taking her food 'long wi' her, her'd bide there all 
day, an' half the night too if the weather was dirty 
an' the boats not home. Haul 'em up, her would, 
like any man, an' you'd see her there most days, 
making or mending nets, which her'd learnt to do, 
sitting on the beach amongst the boats an' pigs 
wi' Dan'l Biscoe's little boy squat beside her. 
Farmer'd rage an' tear an' send me down after 



ii RUTH'S 'RUTH' 105 

her till I got hardly no work at all done; but 
her'd never leave thic beach till Dan'l's boat was 
in, an' her could deliver up to 'en his little boy. 
"Hullo, you! Be 'ee there, maid?" he'd shout 
as he fetched the harbour. 

( "Hullo, you !" her'd shout back, imitating 
the fishermen's manner o' speaking, which did 
drive farmer fair mazed when her tried it on up 
to the farm just for to annoy him an' please her- 
self. u Hullo, you ! If thee 't comin', come, an' 
I'll haul thee up; an' if thee a'tn't, zay so, an' 
I'll bring out the li'l punt." 

'Dan'l Biscoe named his new trawler the Ruth 
after her. Wild chap, he was, wilder than most 
Waremen is, or used to be. His first wife, they 
said, died o' worrying about 'en, his doings to sea 
an' ashore; which may well have been, 'cause her 
was a wisht puling body by all accounts. Not 
but what he was a good fisherman an' earned good 
money. He was always lucky, an' he'd go to sea 
when never another boat did dare to put its nose 
round the Head. 

'Nothing would satisfy Miss Ruth but to go 
to sea in the Ruth. 'Twas known as Ruth's Ruth, 
thic boat, an' it come'd to farmer's ears that 'twas 
so. He said her should never go out in her, n'eet 



io6 ALONGSHORE a 

go down to Ware beach any more, an' threatened 
to lock her up. But when the new trawl was 
ready, what her'd had a hand in the making 
of .... I mind her creeping away from the 
farm thic evening wi' some food an* extry clothes 
under her arm. "Pearnie," her said, "what do 'ee 
make o' the weather? I be going to sea in my 
boat 'long wi' my man." 

' "Your man, Miss?" says I. 

' "Silly boy — Dan'l Biscoe," her answers back 
wi' a blush, turning down the cliff path so light- 
some as a rabbit. Her eyes was very bright, an* 
yet they had the look o' a suffering animal in 'em. 
Young as I was, I know'd well 'nuff what that 
meant. 

"Twas a night, thic night. The sea were roar- 
ing under cliff, an' when farmer sent me down to 
Ware village for to find out what was become o' 
her, the spray was flying right over the Head. I 
was only a boy an' got frightened. 'Twas such a 
rush an' a roar o' wind wi' it all. I hid meself in 
a linhay an' catched clean off to sleep. It might 
have made a difference if I'd gone on; an' it might 
not; nobody can tell. 

"Bout midnight Dan'l's boat drove in. They 
was half-drownded aboard, Ruth most of all. Her 



ii TURNED OUT 107 

hadn't no shift o' clothes, an' anyway 'twasn't no 
fit time for her to trudge up over the Head, so 
Dan'l's mother puts her to bed in DanTs house 
an' stays there 'long wi' her. 

'Farmer heard o't, o' course. Next day, when 
Ruth — her clothes dried — comes home, he meets 
her, barring the gateway, an' says, "No fish 
to-day, thank you, fishwife." That's all he said, 
but 'twas his way of saying it. Her know'd her 
wasn't to go back there no more. 

'Meeting me later on in the day, her says, 
"Pearnie, can 'ee walk ten miles?" 

1 "Aye, Miss," says I, for I'd have up an* 
followed her anywhere. Her was that sort. 

1 "I'm going to my aunt's, to Otford," her says, 
"an' Dan'l's coming down in our boat for to 
marry me an' fetch me home by sea. I'm going to 
sail home," her says, "like a fisherman's wife ought 
to. Pearnie, boy, come on! Pearnie, boy, come 
on !" her says. An' with the same, us started. 

'They was married to Otford Church, an' the 
wedding party walked down 'long wi' 'em to 
Otford Cove, where the Ruth was hauled up, for 
to help shove 'em off. Ruth shoves, too, an' 
jumps in over the bows like any fisherman, wedding 
dress an' all, an' helps hoist sail. "Good-bye!" 



108 ALONGSHORE n 

her calls, "Walk home quick, Pearnie." Her 
wouldn't have none aboard for to help sail the 
boat but her an' Dan'l. Blowing north-easterly, 
'twas, an' squally. From the top o' Steep Head I 
watched 'em beating home, sitting together in the 
starn. Wi' my own eyes I saw a squall catch 'em 
off Ware Head, an' the Ruth go over. I saw 
it, I say — you knows how gently a boat fills an 
capsizes to them what's looking on. 

'When they picked Dan'l up there was nothing 
to be seen o' Ruth; an' nothing was seen o' her 
until six days afterwards Dan'l's little boy by his 
first wife runs in house, saying, "Daddy Biscoe, 
the pigs be eating my Ruth." 

' "What, cheel?" says DanTs mother. 

'But Dan'l, who was up to bed, 'cause he 
couldn't sleep nohow by night — Dan'l heard, an' 
Dan'l know'd. "God!" he shouts, running from 
his bed just as he was. Down to beach he goes, 
an' there he finds his bride wi' the pigs fighting — 
fighting for possession o' her. Aye! an' they 
followed 'en right up street, grunting an' snorting 
to his very door, as he carried her home to his 
house. 

That was the Bride's Return. What do 'ee 
think o' it, you ?' 



n AT DADDY PEARN'S AGE 109 

'Makes me feel sick, it does,' Granfie Coombe 
complained. 

'Poor things! Poor things, to be sure/ 
lamented Uncle Henry Oborne. 'Ah ! 'tisn't 
like 't used 't be, not up to Ware nother.' 

But Daddy Pearn, before resting his chin on his 
stick, chuckled as if with amusement. 'Dan'l Bis- 
coe,' he said, 'went away to sea an' was drownded 
off the Cape of Good Hope, which I reckon was 
the best that could happen. That was seventy 
year ago, near about. When I looks back. . . .' 

Daddy Pearn laughed outright. 

He is so very, very old that human joy and 
pain have perhaps become a little distant to him. 



Ill 



III 



12. LONGSHORE FISHERIES 

The typical longshoreman uses nothing larger 
than second-class sailing boats, well under fifteen 
tons, and mostly undecked. He is more or less 
remote from any of the great fishing ports, with 
their harbourage for big boats and their established 
fish-markets, and owing to the smallness of his 
craft, he is bound as a rule to fish within twenty 
miles from shore. Hence his name. He pays 
for help on the share system, and the capital 
value of his boats and gear seldom exceeds a 
hundred pounds, hardly ever two hundred. He 
is, in fact, the small holder of the sea. 
It is true, as the song says, that 

The husbandman has rent to pay, 
And seed to purchase every day, 
But he who ploughs the rolling deeps, 
Though never sowing, always reaps; 
The ocean's fields are fair and free, 
There are no rent days on the sea! 

113 



ii4 ALONGSHORE m 

Therein lies the strength of the fisherman's 
economic position: the fish he brings ashore he 
has paid nothing for, and what he is paid for his 
labour he spends at home; so that the country- 
has its fish and keeps its money too. But it 
is equally true, from the longshoreman's point 
of view, that he does pay rent, and to a most 
capricious landlord, the sea itself — his rent being 
the upkeep of his boats and gear, and damage 
or total loss by storm. (Boats on a beach are 
not insurable.) And in any case, it is clear that 
low rent, or no rent at all, will be quite useless 
if he cannot obtain for what he has to sell a price 
high enough to pay his working expenses; if, in 
other words, he cannot find, ready for him, 
markets good enough to procure him that price. 
(Fishing companies and combines, like large 
farmers, are able to a great extent to make their 
own markets and look after themselves.) Of the 
many longshore fisheries around the British coasts, 
most are declining, and some are practically dead. 
Such decay can be put down partly to the de- 
pletion of British waters, and partly to social and 
educational changes, which have made men less 
ready to face the hardships of longshore fishing; 
but, as one sees after turning over in one's mind 



BAD MARKETS 115 

a score of remedies that wouldn't work, it is 
mainly due to the want of a fair sale for catches. 
Facilities for sending fresh-caught British fish into 
the central markets — of which Billingsgate is, of 
course, the chief — have not kept pace with the 
facilities for sending home iced fish caught by large 
vessels outside British waters. (Our railway here 
was once induced to grant a lower freightage on 
fish to London; whereupon they started charging 
for the return of empties; and therefore the ex- 
penses of carriage came to much the same thing in 
the end.) Thus the local markets have been spoilt, 
and the central markets remain for the longshore- 
man neither accessible nor good; nor, there is 
every reason to believe, are they even passably 
honest. 'What's the use, 5 say fishermen, 'of 
putting to sea and hauling about our boats and 
gear, when we can't catch 'em like we used to, 
an' what we do catch we can't get the proper 
price for?' Bad markets lead to half-hearted 
fishing, which leads to greater irregularity of 
supply, which leads to worse markets again; and 
so a vicious circle is formed and perpetuated. 

An analysis of the trade of our own fishery, 
which is fairly varied and typical, will probably 
convey the clearest idea of the longshoreman's 



n6 ALONGSHORE m 

situation and of the difficulties with which he has 
to contend. The town is both fishing port and 
watering-place, growing yearly less and less of 
the former and more of the latter. Indeed, 
were it not for some pleasure boating in the sum- 
mer, as a stand-by, fishing could hardly continue. 
The largest boats used, open boats under twenty-five 
feet in length, are the mackerel and herring drifters. 
Whereas twenty years ago upwards of thirty 
drifters used to put to sea, there are now fewer 
than ten in active service. Fishing is become sad. 

The fish is sold: 

(i) By sending it directly to Billingsgate on 
commission. 

(2) By selling it on the beach to local buyers, 
who either forward it to Billingsgate or distribute 
it among fishmongers and hawkers. 

(3) By selling it on the beach in small lots to 
fishmongers and hawkers. 

(4) By the fishermen hawking it themselves, 
or selling it privately to the consumers. 

There are thus three markets for the fish: (c.) 
the central markets, for large quantities; (/.) the 
local market, for smaller quantities and in hot 
weather; and (p.) the private market, for very 
small catches of the choicer kinds. 



THE CATCHES OF FISH 117 

The catches in order of importance, with their 
markets in order of probability, are : 

Mackerel (May to September), in drift nets, 
by hooking, and in seines (/., c., and p.). 

Herrings (November to March), in drift nets 
(c. and /.). 

Sprats (autumn), in seine nets (/. and c). 

Flat-fish, in seines and trammels (/.). 

Lobsters, in pots and prawn-nets (/. and p.). 

Prawns, in skim, setting, and boat nets (p. 
and /.). 

Bass and Mullet, only occasionally, in seines 
(p., l. } and c.) . 

Pollack, in pollack nets and on lines (/. and p.) 

Dog-fish, in drift and moored nets; skate, and 
conger {p. and /.). 

Whiting (I. and />.), cod, and hake have not 
been caught of recent years. 

There are possibilities in trawling on a small 
scale, as a stop-gap, when nothing else is doing, 
but there is hardly a livelihood in it without a 
harbour fit for larger boats. 

It might seem, at first sight, that the markets 
for fish are both abundant and adequate. In 
point of fact their abundance is a sign of their 
inadequacy. Fishermen would be only too glad 



n8 ALONGSHORE m 

to sell all they catch in one market, if they 
could. 

To criticise the methods of disposing of fish in 
reverse order: 

( i ) Private sales are at best only a means of 
picking up odd small sums on what would not 
otherwise be sold. And fishermen, if they are 
fishing, have no time for hawking. 

(2) Fishmongers and hawkers expect some- 
thing like 100 per cent profit for carrying fish up 
the street and selling it. They sometimes make 
as much as 150 or 200 per cent, and will not as 
a rule buy unless they foresee 50 per cent. And 
hawkers by no means always pay up the amount 
they have agreed. 

( 3 ) The fish buyers usually act merely as agents 
for larger buyers, who themselves distribute the 
fish or send it to some central market. Each of the 
several middlemen takes his pickings, of course. 
If the buyer should lose on his speculation, he is 
not above asking the fisherman to accept a less 
price than was agreed upon, and practically the 
fisherman is obliged to do it. If, on the other 
hand, the speculation is very successful, then 
the fisherman hears nothing about it, and has no 
means of finding out. Informal rings among 



in BILLINGSGATE 119 

buyers and 'buyers' agents, to keep prices down, 
are the rule rather than the exception. 

(4) Billingsgate, with the best possibilities, is 
the least satisfactory of all the markets. Long- 
shoremen have not enough capital to speculate in the 
market, nor can they be there, and fishing too, or 
afford agents on the spot. No check can be kept 
upon Billingsgate. Returns may not be believed, 
but they have perforce to be accepted. Collusion 
between salesmen and buyers, the buyer being 
secretly an agent of the salesman, is an undoubted 
fact, though difficult to prove legally. To send 
catches to Billingsgate is frequently to receive, 
instead of money, a demand for payment of 
freightage. A fisherman has been known to go 
up and see his own fish sold, and then to receive 
from the salesman about a third of the sum, 
together with a note to the effect that there had 
been a glut on the market. Another fisherman, 
having brought a catch ashore, telegraphed to 
Billingsgate, and heard in reply that prospects 
were good. He sent up twenty-two thousand 
herrings (i.e. 26,400 at ten dozen to the 'hun- 
dred'), and in return received a penny stamp and 
a halfpenny stamp ! His payment for help and 
the damage done to; his nets by the heavy haul 



120 ALONGSHORE m 

must have cost him at least a pound. Plenty of 
such evidence can be collected among longshore- 
men, but unfortunately without documentary 
proof. 

Remedies are not easy to devise, at all events 
before the extent of the corruption of the markets 
and of the wastage through defective organization 
has been accurately ascertained. For the channels 
through which the fish goes on its way from long- 
shoreman to consumer are both badly organized 
and wasteful. The fisherman is obliged to play 
into the middleman's hands. Three winters ago, 
when almost the only smooth water round Great 
Britain was off the South Devon coast, where we 
were catching plenty of herrings, the price at St. 
Ives rose to 96s. a thousand. Yet we had no 
means of knowing it in time, and we never 
obtained more than 42s., and that only for one 
night's haul. The chief difficulty in the way of 
better organization is the extreme irregularity of 
supplies from longshore fisheries. But that diffi- 
culty ought not to be insurmountable in these 
days of telegraphs, telephones, and rapid (if not 
cheap) transit. Before their reduction in numbers, 
the coastguards used unofficially to telephone along 
the coast for fishermen. Information as to markets 



in CO-OPERATION 121 

should be supplied from some central office, as 
weather forecasts have recently been supplied to 
farmers. 

Longshoremen cannot combine against the 
buyers. They are not men of business training, 
and if they did make themselves familiar with 
business methods they would be too busy to put 
them into practice just when they most needed 
them, namely, when they were catching fish. 
Besides which, they have not the capital to com- 
bine against their economic enemies for the pur- 
pose of keeping prices up. One bad season would 
bring them off their high horse. Better bad prices 
than starvation. 

And it is useless to spring upon them full- 
fledged schemes of co-operation. The sturdiness 
of character which, combined with their sturdi- 
ness of physique, makes them such valuable 
members of the community, at the same time 
unfits them for the give-and-take of co-operative 
methods. But something might be done to 
improve the fisheries and prepare the longshore- 
men for successful co-operation, if men of business 
ability and sufficient capital would compete with 
the buyers on their own ground, in their own 
manner, and then would divide the surplus profits 



122 ALONGSHORE m 

among the fishermen in the shape of bonuses, as 
co-operative societies divide their profits among 
their members. 

The most immediate, the most necessary, step 
is the improvement of Billingsgate and the other 
central markets, before fishermen, for lack of 
encouragement, become further impressed with 
the maxim, so fatal to the development of any 
trade, that a bird in the hand is always worth 
two in the bush. Only when the centres of the 
fish trade have been dealt with can the outlying 
branches be brought into a healthier state. 

Longshoremen are a hardy, independent race 
of men, very cheap to the nation, and at the 
foundation of its seafaring. They only want the 
chance to live. It would be a pity to discover 
their value too late, and to try and revive them 
after they were, as a breed, extinct. 



i 3 . A FLEET OF NETS 

It is fifty years or more since machine-made drift- 
nets of cotton were first boated on our beach, 
amid loud prophecies of failure, in place of the 
old hempen nets made by hand; yet some of the 
prestige accorded to hand-made gear, some of its 
sentiment and the affection in which it is held, 
seems still to cling about a fleet of nets. No 
longer brided knot after knot, mesh after mesh, 
through months of patient toil, by women and old 
men, they still convey that keener sense of pos- 
session which toil gives. There are things proper 
to be done with them, whether necessary at the 
moment or not. They have their traditional 
ceremonies. They ought to be spread on the 
beach to dry at such and such times, and barked 
at certain seasons. That a fisherman does not 
trouble to treat his nets well is a handy slur to 
throw at him. They are the costliest part of his 
gear; they require the most careful looking after. 

123 



i2 4 ALONGSHORE m 

Unlike patches on old garments, new pieces in old 
nets invariably give way before the yarn around; 
and that maybe is the reason why nets are mended 
and have pieces let into them long after it would 
be more profitable to sell them for strawberry beds 
and buy new ones. To own a fleet of nets is 
never to catch up with one's work ; for they always 
want something doing to them, and there is no better 
instructor in the art of putting off till to-morrow 
what can be done to-day. But in so far as a man 
possesses a fleet, although he has lost his boats and 
all his other gear, and has even become a laughing- 
stock, he still, in virtue of his nets, commands a 
certain amount of respect. 'Fine time for the 
herrings, this; where's oP Billy-Boy's fleet o' nets?' 
some one will remark about Christmas. 

'Time he brought they out if he means to do 
ort wi' 'em,' will probably be the reply, though 
they have never been out this ten years. 

'G'out! the mice have eaten holes in they, I 
reckon,' follows by way of practical comment. 

'A proper fleet o' nets, oV Billy-Boy's!' sums 
up the situation. 

Had I a fleet of my own, I could easily find a boat 
to put them in, but if I had only the boat towards 
it, I could scarcely expect to borrow a fleet of nets. 



i" GREAT CATCHES 125 

It used sometimes to be said of great catches, 
that there was a herring in every mesh, until it 
occurred to some one to reckon up the meshes in a 
sixty- fathom net (scale, thirty-two meshes to the 
yard), and they were found to number not far 
short of a million. With a fleet of a dozen such 
nets, between ten and eleven million meshes are 
shot out in order to catch — perhaps half-a-dozen 
mackerel or herrings. Catch, I say, meaning it 
in the active sense, just as one might say that a 
hook catches fish, but in a landing net they are 
caught; for drift nets do not simply enclose the 
mackerel and herrings; they mesh them. Seine 
nets, which are shot around the fish, enclose 
them. Trawls scrape them up. Trammels, on 
the other hand, consist of three walls of net 
hanging closely side by side, the two outer walls 
made of very large square meshes, the inside wall 
of small-scale net, so that when a fish swims 
through an outer mesh on one side, it hits the 
small-scale net in the centre, carries it on through 
a large mesh on the other side, and so finds 
itself trapped in a narrow-necked pouch of small 
net. But a trammel is moored near rocks, and 
is seldom over fifty fathoms long, if so much; 
whereas a fleet of drift-nets, on its way up and 



126 ALONGSHORE m 

down with the tide, sweeps several miles of sea. 
The fish swim into its meshes, and, on account of 
their fins and gills, are unable to back out again. 
How many small fish swim right through the net, 
how many large ones cannot get in, how many of 
all those that strike the nets fail to mesh them- 
selves — nobody knows. Possibly a very large 
number. Some nights a good proportion of fish 
are dragged inboard along with the yarn, entangled 
rather than meshed. It is probable that at such 
times they have been simply cruising about, instead 
of migrating or pursuing their food. 

A fish's-eye view of a fleet of nets, could one 
take it, would be a strangely impressive sight. 
One would see — looking up through water grow- 
ing rapidly a darker green in the twilight — the 
keel and bottom-strakes of a small boat. In clear 
water one might also see her foresail hauled down, 
leaving only the mizzen up in order to keep her 
head to the wind. Then, with that peculiar soft 
plash which netting makes, fathom after fathom 
of it would be shot overboard in heaps, and would 
float away, straightening itself out until there ex- 
tended from the boat — itself a mere black bubble 
on the water — an immense brown curtain more 
than half-a-mile long, and five or six fathoms 



THE DEATH-CURTAIN 127 

deep. For mackerel it would hang from the 
surface downwards, but for herrings it would be 
sunk in the depth of the water, supported by 
buoys and lanyards, so that its foot was just free 
of the bottom — an improvement in fishing dis- 
covered not so very many years ago. The motion 
of the death-curtain, hanging free and unleaded 
from its headrope, would be inconceivably grace- 
ful; for not the finest fabric floating in air, nor 
the most accomplished dancer, nor even smoke, 
can vie in delicacy and softness and exquisite 
suspense with the waving of net in water. So, 
throughout the night, it would be just visible, 
drifting in the flood and the ebb tides, and curling 
back on itself during slack water. And towards 
dawn the two men in charge of it would be seen 
to> peep out over the gunwale, the boat and nets 
would draw towards each other, and finally the 
whole curtain, that had stretched far out of sight, 
would return to the unknown land whence it had 
come, snugly piled up between two thwarts of the 
drifter. To a fish of some intelligence, yet without 
enough to* distinguish between human limbs and 
the apparently animate nets they shoot out, there 
would be something terrible in the long arm of 
fishermen; something as mysterious and as darkly 



128 ALONGSHORE * 

uncanny as the interference of spirits in the 
familiar life of mankind; something beautiful with 
the fascination that always accompanies destruction. 

People who- could not stand the work and 
exposure for one night, let alone for a week on 
end, come down to the beach and ask questions, 
and attempt to give instruction: it is really 
wonderful how kindly and instructive they some- 
times are. 'Why don't you do this? You 
ought to do that. Tell me now. . . .' they say; 
for fishermen are expected to drop the work they 
have in hand if gentlefolk want to talk to them, 
and because they have not much school educa- 
tion they are often thought to be ignorant of their 
own work too. 'It's simple enough,' the wiseacre 
continues. 'You go out to sea in fairly calm 
weather. You shoot your nets. The fish go into 
them while you're asleep. . . . You do sleep out 
there, don't you ?' 

'Sometimes us closes an eye when there's nort 
about to look out for, but 'tisn't the same thing 
as sleeping in your bed, not out there on the bare 
bottom-boards in our little open boats; an' very 
often we'm too cold, or 'tis too shuffly, like, wi' 
a breeze springing up, or you can't catch off, or 
summut.' 



QUESTIONERS 129 

'Well, you do get some sleep, anyhow. And 
then you bring your fish in to market and sell 
them, and you can afford to- laze about here all 
day long. I paid threepence for a mackerel this 
morning. A thousand threepences. . . .' 

'Us didn' get threepence each for 'em. Us 
got six shillings a hunderd.' 

The fisherman remains obstinately short-spoken 
and evasive until his questioner moves on, and then 
he bursts out with, 'What the hell's the good for 
the likes o' they to chatter like that? Questioning 
o'ee an' wanting to know how much thee's earn, 
an' how thee's earn it ! S'pose we was to ask the 
people what us takes out to sea how much their 
income is, an' how they earns it, and w'er they gets 
it honest or not. If they sees 'ee doing all right 
for a week or two, they says thee't making a 
fortune, an' when thee casn't do nort week a'ter 
week, they don't take no notice o' thic. Let 
'em get a fleet o' nets o' their own, an' work 
'em themselves, an' see what 'tis like. I'll bound 
they'd jolly soon tire o'it an' want our help, the 
likes o' they mazed articles. They 'ouldn't laze 
about all day a'ter nights to sea ; they'd go right to 
bed, an' better 'fit us did the same out the way 
o'em. An' yet they comes along telling off the 

K 



130 ALONGSHORE m 

likes o'us an' asking questions. They knows, 
seems so, an' the likes o'us, what's had the experi- 
ence o'it, don't. Why, I reckon that if you got a 
fleet o' nets you'm so much meshed in 'em as ever 
the fish be. . . .' 

A fleet of nets, indeed, is pretty nearly one 
man's work, though some seasons they hardly earn 
enough to pay for barking, and all the time, 
whether ashore or boated, they are wearing them- 
selves out. When they come to the beach, and 
are drawn out of the maker's sacks, they look like 
ropes of cream-coloured lace, so fine is the yarn 
until two or three lots of bark have been boiled 
into it. Turned to a rich shade of terra-cotta by 
their first barking, they are put into their head- 
ropes and boated; and thenceforward they must 
never be let out of mind. For not only have rents 
in them to be mended before they get bigger — 
ticklish work that not every fisherman can do well 
in these days of machine-made nets — but they have 
to be spread out in the sun, turned over like hay, 
and dried, sufficiently often to keep them from 
rotting, yet not so often as to damage them even 
more by hauling them about on the shingle. At 
the end of each season, before they are barked and 
bagged, they have to be washed by two men 



ni THE LIFE OF NETS 131 

standing knee-deep in the sea, and after a big 
catch, especially of herrings, they are also given a 
slouzing, because, in spite of the tannin of the bark, 
fish slime in a heap of nets will cause them to 
ferment and heat up, so that after one night's 
neglect new nets have been hauled out of the boat 
as brittle as tinder. Even after they are bagged 
and put away in a dry place, little bits of seaweed 
that have not been picked out will take moisture 
from the air and act as centres of rottenness, and 
mice, which seem to delight in the taste of bark, 
will eat holes into them. Nets, like boats and 
men, are most safe when they are in use. 

With care and good luck, a fleet of nets in 
active service may last ten years. In their end — 
whether they are simply worn out, or rot to bits, 
or get foul of the bottom, or are lost, cut away, 
torn out of their headropes by rough seas, or are 
broken up by a heavy catch, or, most of all, when 
poverty sells them for half their worth — there is 
always something of tragedy. For nets are things 
very close to men. They are a means of liveli- 
hood, and, more than that, they are instruments of 
gambling — of gambling with the many chances of 
the sea. Upon them fishermen stake their lives; 
and often, but not always, they win. 



14. LAME DUCK HUNTING 

One after another the herring-drifters left the 
beach, and, with a nor'west breeze off-land, 
steered for the sou'western fishing-ground. Men 
ran into the water to give them a last shove. The 
crews, already wet-footed, scrambled aboard over 
the bows. Mizzens fluttered out aft. Tall 
dipping lugsails went up the masts in jerks, while 
the shouts of the men hauling the halyards taut 
came ashore over the water strangely calmed by 
the spaciousness around; and as the boats, one by 
one, luffed up into the wind, the winter afternoon's 
sunlight shone white on their sails, on clean new 
sails and dirty sails alike. Small craft though 
they were, their going for the night made a stately 
procession down into the west. 

We stood round our own drifter, which had 
been hauled to the water's edge, waiting for Jim 

132 



in WHITING ? 133 

to come out of house. 'Is thic fellow going to be 
all night getting ready?' asked Richard. 

Tss,' said Benjie, following his own train of 
thought and peering to sea with his keen old eyes ; 
'I shouldn't wonder if thee doesn't make a haul 
t'night. Two or three boats from the westward 
had 'em last night, so many as they could haul 
aboard. Got a good mind, I have, to shove off 
thy sailing-boat, Richard, an' come down t'night 
an' see what you'm 'bout. Might take a line, too, 
an' see w'er there's any o' they whiting left to the 
out-ground o' Refuge Cove. I've a-see'd plenty 
caught there thees time o' year.' 

Richard stood up on the heap of nets in the 
boat and spoke very deliberately. 'You'd better 
to,' he said. 'If us gets more'n us can carry, an' 
has to cut away nets, you may just so well hae 'em 
as they chaps from the west'ard, what tears 'em 
abroad for 'ee anyhow, an' p'raps you never sees 
'em again. Can take my boat all right. Her 
don't leak much. — Whenever's thic fellow coming? 
Time us was there, now, wi' our nets shot. 
Waiting 'bout yer!' 

We arranged to be on the out-ground of Refuge 
Cove by seven o'clock; to show we were there by 
dipping a flare in threes, with one minute intervals; 



134 ALONGSHORE m 

and to make at once for the drifter if it gave 
the same signal. Jim came along the beach sea- 
booted; spare guernseys, oilskins, a bottle of tea, 
and a paper bag of sandwiches under his arm. 

'Coom on!' Richard growled. 

'Plenty o' time, ain't there?' said Jim un- 
hurriedly. Mast, sails, sweeps, and ballast were 
bundled into the drifter. With an 'All together, 
boys !' we shoved them off. And afterwards we 
hauled the smaller sailing-boat down to the water. 

We were about to put to sea ourselves when a 
visitor came down the beach to the boat. 'Where 
are you going at this time of day in that boat?' 
he demanded as if by right. 

Benjie hitched up his trousers, put his hands 
into his pockets, and gazed into the man's face 
with mischievous candour. 'Where be us going, 
sir? Why, we'm going lame duck hunting.' 

'Lame duck hunting? Is that allowed? Isn't 
it poaching? Where are the ducks?' 

'That's for us to find out, sir.' 

'Well, what d'you do with them?' 

'That depends on w'er us finds any. Time we 
was off. Good-afternoon, sir. — Shove !' 

Once afloat, Benjie broke into loud laughter. 
'Aye!' he said, his mind no doubt harking back 



ni A STARCH-COLLAR JOKER 135 

to the days when there were few visitors about 
to ask questions. Thic starch-collar joker '11 be 
down under cliff tomorrow looking for broken- 
legged ducks, you see. I bain't going to tell the 
likes o' they question-asking interlopers that our 
sort o' lame ducks is drifters wi' more herrings 
in their nets than they can take aboard. Let 'em 
look!' 

Darkness had by this time crept over the sea. 
Along the southern horizon was a shadowy bank 
of cumulus clouds. 'They woolpacks,' Benjie 
remarked, 'bain't there for nort; nobody won't 
go to sea t'morrow night.' In the cloudless nor'- 
west, the sky, faintly tinged with green, was dark, 
deep, and, as it seemed, infinitely empty; yet from 
it, black on the water, came spiteish puffs of wind 
that heeled the boat over and quickened the lap- 
lap of the wavelets against her strakes into one 
continuous, most musical note. Behind us the 
comfortable stationary lights of the little town 
receded into a blur; while, as we neared the fleet, 
its glimmering, slightly swaying lights increased in 
number till it seemed that, before us, was a forest 
hung with lamps. 'They west'ard chaps,' said 
Benjie with a chuckle, 'be up 'long t'night. 
They'll hae 'em!' 



136 ALONGSHORE in 

On the out-ground of Refuge Cove we down- 
sailed, baited our hooks, and threw out the lines. 
Immediately, the riding-lights of the fleet, which 
before had seemed so remotely fixed, began to bob 
and dip. One, brighter than the others, dipped 
thrice; dipped thrice again. 

'They'm signalling!' I cried. 

'Bide quiet/ whispered Benjie. 'I got a 
whiting nibble. Likely as not 'tis the boats 
rocking.' 

We poured paraffin oil into the baler upon a 
rag torn from Benjie's coat and set light to it. 
The flame shot up, was dipped three times, and 
then I had to drop the baler into the boat, where 
the oil spread and threatened to burn us out. 
'They coastguards,' said Benjie, 'will think we'm 
a ship in distress.' 

'Let 'em!' said I, sucking an oily burnt finger. 

Once more the brightest riding light appeared 
to dip three times. 

We wound up the lines — "Twas a whiting 
bite, sure 'nuff !' — made sail, and steered sou'west 
to the fleet. Presently, with some of the larger 
riding-lights straight outside us, we crossed several 
of the long lines of corks that buoy up the head- 
lines of the drift-nets. We spoke one of our own 



ni A HARBOUR CRAFT 137 

craft, asking the course to a west'ard port. 'Yu'm 
heading for it,' they replied. — 'G'out, 'tis Benjie. 
What be doing yer?' 

'Lame duck hunting, for sure. Have 'ee 
catched ort?' 

'Us been foul an' had to haul in. Shooting 
their nets all up in heaps, they be, t'night.' 

'Aye ! an' so they will when there's herrings 
about. Where's Jim and Richard?' 

'Right down there to the west'ard.' 

Next we boarded a large harbour craft that had 
a fore-cabin. They made us hot coffee on a red- 
hot stove which leaked till the air was thick and 
stifling. Fishermen in their stockinged feet lay 
around smoking, while Benjie sat bolt upright and 
lectured on what the likes o'us have to contend wi' 
and on the discomforts of our small open boats 
compared with such craft as we were in. Another 
mug of coffee each; then 'Gude night to 'ee, an' 
thank you,' and the cold open sea. 

From one of the two westernmost boats a man 
came aboard of us. We rowed him half a mile 
down his nets, found them foul of a harbour 
craft's longer fleet, hauled several fathoms in- 
board, and shot clear again. The other western- 
most drifter was ours. 'Row quiet,' said 



138 ALONGSHORE 



in 



Benjie, 'they'm asleep, I'll warrant; an' they'm 
foul.' 

The drifter itself looked asleep, rolling gently 
to its nets on the swell. Round and about the 
mizzen halyard the riding-lamp swung. The 
mainsail was spread abroad over the bows. Our 
boats bumped. The sail heaved like a gigantic 
loose-skinned animal awakening; it was flung 
back, and from underneath Jim's startled face 
looked out. Richard snored on, wrapped in 
a fearnaught jacket, his head under the cutty.. 
'Thought we was in a collision,' Jim explained.] 
'Us an't catched nort. Hauled in two nets for 
a hunderd an' a half. We'm foul, I b'lieve, o' 
thic inside boat's nets. Row down 'long the 
buoys, will 'ee? Us won't try an' haul in till the 
moon rises. Cold, ain't it? I'd only just catched 
off to sleep. . . .' 

But his sleepiness belied him. 

Already the clouds to the eastward were filling 
with a chilly light. We rowed down the buoys; 
passed the inside drifter; saw the two lines of 
corks drawing closer and closer together; and, 
finally, found the two fleets of nets buoy to buoy. 
Hailing the inside drifter, we told them so. 

'What be chattering 'bout?' 



THE MOON-RAINBOW 139 

Tou'm foul; that's what 'tis.' 

'G'out!' 

Benjie chuckled. Til settle 'em,' he said. 
'You see.' 

Whereupon we rowed back to the end buoys, 
and, dragging up those of the inside drifter, 
we shortened the lanyards by a fathom, so that the 
nets hung shallower in the tide. Benjie laughed 
hoarsely, as if in answer to a gull that was hover- 
ing round. 'That's settled 'em — shooting foul 
like that! They won't catch herrings, but they'll 
drift clear. "Some artful oV devil," they'll say, 
"as knows drifting has been along here!" 

Then we upsailed for home. Soon the twink- 
ling riding-lights seemed miles away on the shining 
water; shining, because the moon had risen above 
the bank of woolpacks, and was riding up the sky. 
From the land a ghostly moon-rainbow arose, 
arching to sea, protectively, right over the tranquil 
fleet. A peace beyond words reigned. It was 
almost impossible to imagine that there to the 
west'ard, under the wide, bright, silent heavens, 
under the great moon-rainbow, men hauled and 
strained and tore and swore at their fouled nets. 

'Us an't found no lame ducks nor got no 
herrings for our pains,' said Benjie, pulling with 



i 4 o ALONGSHORE m 

quenchless vigour at the windward oar to help the 
boat along. 'But us an't been down for nort. 
WeVe a-set some broken-winged ducks right. 
Aye! I reckon they inside chaps '11 wonder when 
they sees their lanyards taken up, an' so '11 thic 
starch-collar interloper when he goes down along 
t'morrow to hunt lame clucks for his dinner. 
Lord, what a night 'tis, to be sure ! 1 an't never 
see'd a better, an' I don't suppose I ever shall. 
'Not now,' he added. 



15- A SORT OF A KIND OF A WRECK 

Instead of dying away towards evening the south- 
easterly breeze blew steadily fresher, and along- 
shore the lop rose higher. Those drifters which 
had been anchored off since the previous night's 
mackerel-fishing kicked to it at their moorings. 
The sea was of a living blueness, flecked gaily 
with white foam; so blue and so white that the 
sky itself looked pale above. 

'Be us going, or bain't us? 'Cause if we be, 
jump in!' And into the punt they jumped — 
Benjie, who owns the drifter, together with Jim 
and Richard, who work her for him. After Benjie 
had brought the punt ashore again, and we had 
hauled her up together, he remained with her cut- 
rope still in his hand, seated on the shingle, gazing 
rather anxiously out to sea. Opening his snuff- 
box with the air of a man who has plenty of 
waiting before him, he took a long strong pinch. 

141 



i 4 2' ALONGSHORE 



in 



'Iss, he said, sniffing, as the drifter's lugsail 
went up more jerkily than usual because she was 
plunging so into the seas, 'they'd better ha' turned 
their starns to it like thic drifter that's come ashore 
over along. 'Tisn't no fit time ; an' they wouldn't 
ha' gone, I'll warrant, if her hadn't been a'ready 
moored off. Thunder weather, this is; an' I'd 
rather be catched in a gale, what comes on proper, 
than in one o' they thunder-puffs, what comes 
down on 'ee in five minutes, blows like a hurricane 
for ten, an' then 'tis so calm you got to strip to 
your flannel an' row home. But there ! they can 
go if they'm minded, though 'tisn't never worth 
while to risk losing your fleet o' nets, an' 
endangering your own life too; an' that you'll 
find out when you'm so old as I be, if you don't 
know it when you'm young. Nor I bain't going 
to drive anybody to sea in wild weather, not if 
the drifter don't pay for barking her own nets. 
Ah ! the old Henrietta was the boat. Pity I ever 
sold she up to Ware, an' bought thic there lumber- 
some gert thing. I've never done no good wi' 
her, nor never shan't, not like us did wi' the 
Henrietta. Come'd down, they did; put her gear 
in her an' shoved off ; an' upsailed for Ware wi' a 
fine leading wind. Her went from me, me watch- 



m REGRETS 143 

ing, an' I'd give all I got for to hae her back again. 
Lord! the catches weVe a-brought home in her 
afore now — more in a week than thic there's ever 
catched in a season. Perty li'l boat, her was; 
handy, an' swimmed like a duck; would carry a 
weight in her, too. I only wish her was back again.' 

Benjie picked pebbles out of the beach, 
moistening them with his tongue to see what sorts 
they were. He held out one, saying, 'Moss- 
agate !' and without another word threw the 
moss-agate into the sea. The old Henrietta was 
in his mind. 

Whilst the sun was setting in a haze behind 
Steep Head, the sea's laughter changed to grey- 
ness, its joyfulness into savagery. Clouds that 
had for some time been lying along the horizon 
began to lift into the sky. 'They've hauled 
down,' said Benjie, shading his eyes against the 
glint of sunset on the water. T can't see nort 
but their mizzen. They must be shooting their 
nets b' now. Better if they'd a-turned home wi'out 
shooting o'em. — There!' he exclaimed, 'did 'ee 
see thic? Lightning! Down there to the sou'- 
west. There 'tis again, up over land! Aye, 'tis 
gathering up. See how this here lop's making. 
I wish they was ashore. 'Tis time.' 



144 ALONGSHORE * 

Darkness fell. On going out again after sup- 
per, Benjie was there, still watching, crouched down 
on the lee side of a boat. 'Can 'ee glimpse their 
light?' he asked. 'I can't. But they'm hauling 
their nets right enough. They won't bide out 
there in this. I only hopes they gets 'em aboard 
all right wi'out hauling o'em out o' the headropes. 
C'ooh! 'tis hauling; / knows. I've a-been out 
there before now in a scuffle like this here, an' had 
to let fathoms o'it slip through me hands 'cause I 
couldn't hold on to it. 'Tisn't no fit time to be 
out there. These here thunder-puffs. . . .' 

The south-easterly wind was still freshening, 
the lop still making. Distant flickers of lightning 
showed the sea as a vast troubled cavern under- 
neath the clouds; flashes overhead lit up the 
turmoil of it; otherwise only the grey crests of 
the inshore breakers were visible. It began to 
spot with rain. 'This '11 lay the sea a bit if it 
comes on proper,' Benjie remarked. As if some 
magic had spirited them away, the townsfolk who 
had been walking the Front to watch the lightning 
disappeared. Their tramp and their chatter 
suddenly ceased. The Shore Road was empty, but 
for a few shadows hastily crossing the wet shine 
beneath the lamps. The sea hissed as it does 



m SAILING ASHORE 145 

when the wind, increasing faster than the lop, 
drives scudding wavelets over the surface of 
the swell. During the hushes that preceded the 
mutterings of the thunder it was easy to fancy 
that one saw the drifter out there — a little boat 
glimmering in a waste of heaving foam, tossed 
high, plunging low — two men hauling and strain- 
ing to get the nets inboard. Perhaps they were 
already running home under reefed foresail. 

We waited on. The lamps along the Front 
were turned down. A few people who come out 
on rough nights to see the boats run in and lend a 
hand, gathered round in wet mackintoshes. 'I 
sees a light!' cried Benjie, peering into the thick- 
ness over the sea. "Tis her ! Come on V 

Almost before we could run to the foot of the 
beach, the drifter, under full-bellied sail, swooped 
across the breakers and grounded, like a bird shot 
down in a high wind. Benjie ran into the water 
for the cut-rope. I hooked it on to the capstan 
wire. That done, she was ashore. 'Heave away P 
we shouted. With six or eight at the capstan bars 
she crunched ponderously up the beach. 

'How many have 'ee catched?' we asked 
when she was trigged and made fast. 

'Five or six dozen/ Richard replied. 

L 



146 ALONGSHORE m 

Five or six dozen in two-thirds of a mile of 
nets! 

'Hauls in hard, 't do,' said Jim, 'when thee 
casn't see no macker coming in 'long wi' it.' 

'Bain't thic t'other boat in?' inquired Richard, 
nodding towards the next berth. 

'No. — Not eet. — Time her was P 

We waited on, all of us together, wet and dry. 
The rain pelted down. We took refuge in the 
shelter and stood on the seats looking out to sea. 
"Tis lulling a bit,' Benjie observed. Almost as 
he spoke a squall from the sou'west made the 
shelter itself rock. It blew for a few minutes 
violently; then backened back to the south-east. 
In spite of the rain we went down under beach. 

At last the other drifter came ashore, looming 
up suddenly and staggering like a drunken man, 
because the small mizzen which she had hoisted 
in place of her mainsail was not enough to keep 
proper steerage-way on her among the breakers. 
'An' lucky, too,' said one of her two men, 'that us 
had got thic mizzen to the mast. You wouldn't 
ha' see'd us else — not afore the crabs had picked 
holes in us. As 'twas, thic sou'westerly squall 
struck us all aback an' pretty near capsized us. 
Couldn't see nort.' 



m CAST UP 147 

'What can 'ce 'spect,' growled the other man, 
'when you'm drove to sea in foul weather?' 

But that he said in the excitement of the 
moment, not meaning it. 

Midnight struck on the church clock. 

We came in house; snatched up something to 
eat and drink from what remained on the supper- 
table; made a couple of cups o' tay to warm us; 
stripped off our wet clothes and put them to 
dry; and, leaving the kitchen in a sufficient pickle, 
went up-over to bed. 

Just as I was catching off to sleep, I heard 
dimly a flump-flump on the stairs; then a knock, 
and a hurried voice outside my door: 'A't thee 
asleep? Turn out! Quick! There's Waremen 
cast ashore, an' they'm crying for help. 'Astn't 
heard 'em? Crying for help, they be. Hurry 
up ! Turn out ! ' 

We ran out and along the Front, keeping 
together in the murk by the sound of each other's 
footsteps. 

At the bottom of the beach, against the whitish 
broken water of low tide, the blurr of a boat was 
just discernible. She lay broadside on, canted 
away from the sea, exactly as she had knocked 
ashore. 'Who be it?' Jim called down. 



148 ALONGSHORE 

'George an' Harry.' 

What?' 

'In the old Hen. 9 

'The old HenV shouted Jim joyfully, bound- 
ing off the sea-wall. "Tis the old Hen — oP 
Benjie's boat come back again. Whoever thought 
to see she. Come on! Come on! Haul her 
up ! 'Tis the old Hen !' 

'Thee casn't haul her.' 

'Where's the cut-rope o' her? Where's a 
capstan?' 

'There ain't one. Thic thing up top beach is 
only fit to haul up punts.' 

'Well, then, lighten her then. Then, maybe, 
us can haul her up to it. 'Tis only the old Hen. 
Her's so light as a feather, her is, wi'out her nets 
an' gear.' 

"Tisn't no good I tell thee. . . .' 

'Come on an' lighten her an' see. 

We stumbled up the beach with her mast, oars, 
and ballast. We climbed a lamp-post and turned 
up the light. Then we began hauling the tangled 
nets out of her, passing them to the top of the 
beach as fire-buckets are passed along. Some were 
so rotten that they tore under the fingers; of one 
net only the head-rope was left. After a couple of 



in THE OLD 'HEN' HOME 149 

hours' work nearly everything was out of her. 
Creeping round with the capstan bars so that no 
sudden jerk should part the rusty wire, we hauled 
the Henrietta up the beach, and then, leaning 
against her gunwale — which gave to the weight of 
one's shoulders — we stood around her. We looked 
inside. Even in the dim shifty light we saw that 
the poor old Hen was all to bits. 

'This here's my last mackerel drifting this sea- 
son,' said one of the Waremen. 'I've had enough 
o'it. I only came for a stopgap. Crabbing's my 
job.' 

'An' / wouldn't ha' put to sea in her,' said his 
brother, 'if 't hadn't been for obliging my mate 
that I goes trawling with — him that owns her an' 
has let her get like this. Rotten nets, rotten 
ropes, rotten gear, rotten everything! Us 'ould 
ha' managed to beat home all right if the sail 
hadn't blow'd away. When us ran ashore two or 
three big seas knocked us up high and dry, an' 
there we was. God's sakes, what a night !' 

Jim was patting and smoothing the Henrietta. 
Waremen have a reputation for going cheerily to 
sea with gear that's long past it; but Jim had 
carried with him for many years a memory of the 
old boat in her prime; and now he could not deny 



ISO ALONGSHORE m 

to himself what she was come to. Anxious still to 
find some praise for her, he said: 'Aye! but her 
know'd her berth, the old Hen did. This was her 
own berth her knocked into. 'Twas just here us 
come'd ashore wi' thic catch o' herrings — do 'ee 
mind? 'Twas just here her shoved off from — 
the last time. Her know'd her berth. Her 
know'd ! 

'Come along in house, you,' he added. 'Bring 
in your catch in thic bucket. The old Hen '11 lie 
so snug there as ever her did. Her's come to her 
rightful home, an' her knows it.' 

So we brought the Waremen in house, found 
some food, made tea once more, and for a change 
of clothes we routed out old sweaters, patched 
trousers, and darned guernseys. The kitchen was 
choked up with the remains of three suppers and 
with wet garments lying in heaps on the floor. 
They stripped and dried themselves where they 
sat. One of them had the chest and belly muscles 
grandly clean-cut — developed to perfection by a 
life spent at the oars. Yet even while I was wishing 
that some great sculptor would carve his likeness 
before labour wore him out (knowing very well 
all the time that no stone statue in a gallery could 
equal the play of the lamplight upon the living 



i" CRAMP 151 

body in a fellow-fisherman's little kitchen) the 
man jumped up suddenly, and, with a tightened 
face, staring before him at nothing, he pressed his 
chest hard against the corner of the table. It was 
as if, without warning, he had indeed been changed 
to stone. Straightening himself up slowly, he 
took our hands and placed them against his chest. 
The muscles which had been so lissom were knotted 
and strung to the hardness of wood. "Tis the 
cramp,' he said. 'I gets it cruel — gets it to sea 
sometimes. It passes away.' 

'Aye,' said Jim; 'an' I gets the indigestion 
awful sometimes. We'm all o'us wrecks one way 
or t'other.' 

He was still trying to excuse the ways of fate 
to the old Henrietta, 

It was four o'clock. Dawn was filling the 
garden with a thin greenish light, which made one 
feel that the coming day was overlooking us, whose 
minds were dark with the past night. 

The Waremen camped out on an unmade bed. 
And next morning we drank with them, discussing 
mainly the merits of men and women long since 
dead. About noon they hoisted their tattered sail 
with a halyard spliced in two places. Another 
leading wind filled it, and in a few minutes the 



152 ALONGSHORE 

Henrietta was only a distant dusky spot among the 
waves. We scarcely regretted her second going. 
Benjie himself kept aloof with his hands in his 
pockets. 

'Why wasn't 'ee there for to lend a hand 
shoving the Waremen off?' asked Jim. 

'My God I What a wreck her is ! Made me 
sick to see her,' was all he replied. 

'That's it,' said Jim. "Twas a sort of a kind 
of a wreck, I reckon. Her come'd ashore safe, 
but her was a wreck afore ever her put to sea, the 
old Henrietta was. An' that there's the way o'it 
wi' boats an' men.' 

Nevertheless, if we go up to Ware twenty years 
hence, those Waremen will welcome us on account 
of that night, and will have our glasses filled again 
and again till we are drunk, if we want it; and we 
shall talk about the old Henrietta. 'Do 'ee mind 
thic night?' they'll say, referring to her wreck. 
'Do 'ee mind thic night?' we will answer, thinking 
of her youth and her catches of fish. 

Not everything can be wrecked. 



1 6. SEINING 

'There they be! There they be! There they 
be!' 

Instantly the beach is all agog. 

Very likely fishermen have been standing on 
the Front, hands pocketed, the whole of a late 
summer's day, too lazy to live, it would seem, 
yet never with their eyes for long off the sea. 
'Mackerel ought to play up this evening,' is the 
word passed along. The sea looks like it; the 
time of year is come; and perhaps a report has 
been brought in that the water was 'pretty near 
dry wi' fish outside.' Or a screeching flock of gulls 
may have been sighted on the out-ground, flutter- 
ing over the surface of the sea, and making furious 
jabs down into it. Or possibly the brit (our 
name for shoals of fish-fry and whitebait) have 
already fled along shore, darkening the water, and 
jumping out of it like little streaks of silvery light. 

i53 



154 ALONGSHORE m 

In that case, the seine's crew will have strolled 
quietly together nearer the boat, still to all appear- 
ance merely loungers on the beach, but in reality 
as drowsily watchful as cats outside mouse holes. 

Suddenly one of them stiffens up and points — 
points as if his life depended on it, as if some sort 
of fit had struck him so. 

'There they be ! There they be ! There they 
be !' he cries under his breath. 

Where ?' 

'There ! Casn' see ? To Steep Head o'us. — 
There they be again!' he shouts outright; for it 
no longer matters if the mackerel are sighted by 
other seiners. Not far from shore the water is 
splashing with them. Gulls plunge into the 
greenish swirl, and, chased by other gulls, circle 
round with fish in their beaks. The shout gathers 
force : 

'Lookse ! There they be ! Two schools o'em ! 
Heading east they be. Come on! Haul the 
boat down. Us'll hae thic lot. Coom on, I tell 
thee ! What's bide gaping there for? Roosh the 
boat down.' 

Men race along to the seine-boat, looking back 
over their shoulders at the sea. 

'Is the plug in? Baler there?' 



m FISH PLAYING UP 155 

'Aye. . . . Better to look. Aye !' 
'Down with her then. Haul. All together!' 
She is rushed down stern first to the sea : never 
mind about greasy ways for her to run on; seine- 
boats have to stand some knocking-about. Two 
or three men scramble aboard over the bows as 
she takes the water. One man stands upright on 
the net that is piled between the midship thwarts. 
For a minute or two the others lie on their oars, 
while the boat swims weightily on the gently 
heaving sea. 

Not far from her — given good luck — the fish 
break water again. The man on the net points to 
them with a wide gesture which at the same time 
points a course for the boat; jumps off his perch 
on the seine, and prepares to shoot it. Spray 
flies from the hastily, heavily dug oars. Ten to 
one a thole-pin snaps. 'There they be!' sounds 
for the last time, with less of anxiety and more of 
triumph in its tone. 'There they be!' is echoed 
from the gathering crowd on the beach. The end 
of a rough grass rope, which was coiled upon the 
net, is thrown ashore and caught. As the boat 
goes off it is paid out. Then, rowing outwards, 
along, and back to the beach, the seine is shot 
overboard by armfuls, until — if all has gone well 



156 ALONGSHORE 



in 



— the fish find themselves hemmed in between the 
shore and a semicircular wall of net, eighty or a 
hundred fathoms in length, large-meshed in the 
arms but of a smaller-scale mesh towards the centre, 
or bunt; the head-rope corked and the foot-rope 
leaded, so that the top of the net holds up to the 
surface while the bottom of it bites the sand or 
shingle underneath. 

By means of the grass ropes, the two ends of 
the net are hauled ashore anything up to a hundred 
yards apart. The haulers on either arm divide, 
some taking the head-rope and standing up, in 
order to keep it high, the rest taking the foot-rope 
and bending down or kneeling, in order to keep 
it low; all working together and at intervals 
dragging the two arms across the beach nearer 
one another: indeed, the hauling of a seine-net 
done fitty, with all hands, whether standing or 
kneeling, properly placed and keeping good time, 
is like nothing so much as a stationary dance at 
the land's edge, a votive ceremonial dance under 
the wide sky, before the inexhaustible sea, the 
mother of life. 

The mackerel, if it is not a mere 'water-haul,' 
finding themselves caged, make frantic rushes 
from one side of the net to the other and from 



in CONFUSION 157 

top to bottom of the water. The pool within 
the semicircle of head-rope corks is all of a boil 
with them. 'Easy thic head-rope o' yours ! Easy!' 
is the cry, when the corks on one arm bob under; 
for should some of the fish discover a gap, the 
remainder will follow like a flock of sheep, and a 
water-haul it will be. Or again, 'Keep thic foot- 
rope down, casn' ?' lest the leads rise off the 
bottom and any flat-fish there may be in the net 
escape underneath. As the seine comes in, getting 
less and less in weight, the pace quickens, until, 
with brit streaming out of every mesh, and the 
fish flapping and floundering about inside, the 
bunt of the net is hauled ashore in a wave. 

Then the confusion is at its height. If the 
seine has been shot in the daytime anywhere near 
the Front, a crowd bundles down, treads right 
over the net, and almost presses the seiners into 
the water in its eagerness to see the fish, and to 
torment the already harassed fishermen with a hail 
of questions. Children grab at the poisonous 
little stinging-fish, or weevers, and look up with 
bland inquiring eyes when they are roughly 
handled to make them drop their pretty little 
fishes quick. (Were they stung they would pro- 
bably have to be carried home.) Boxes are shouted 



158 ALONGSHORE » 

for, and into them the catch is sorted: first and 
foremost the mackerel, then almost always some 
flat-fish, and afterwards specimens of nearly all 
the commoner fish that swim in our inshore waters 
— bass, pollack, pout, gurnard, whiting, mullet, 
thornbacks, conger, sand - eels, smelts, squid, 
lobsters, wild crabs innumerable, and even once 
in a way a small salmon that has come to go 
up the river, and has found it barred with shingle. 
Not often is the catch so great that men have 
to go into the water and lift the bunt, or the seine 
cannot be brought ashore at all unless most of the 
fish are scooped out of it into a boat with skim- 
nets. The chackle at such times is indescribable, 
made up very largely of contradictory orders and 
heavy-booted cuss-words. For seining hereabout 
is not a job done really fitty. It cannot be. It is 
too chancy, too much of a rush. Nobody can 
foretell the exact moment of the fish playing up, 
and, when they do come, the seine-boat's crew, if 
it has a complete crew of six or eight, are seldom 
altogether on the spot. Therefore the help of any 
bare-kneed strapper who runs down to the ropes 
must be accepted. Among them is pretty sure to 
be a blaremouth, whose tongue no one can still. 
And there is no proper skipper in sole charge. 



m FISHERMAN'S SUNDAY 159 

All are skippers. The owner of the net may not 
have sighted the fish first, and usually there is 
present a man of even more experience, who 
knows best what rock-ledges, under which the 
foot of the net may catch, happen to be uncovered 
by the sand; to whom the owner himself is ready 
enough to defer, but not his scratch crew. We 
have none of the Cornish tuck-seines, for use at 
sea without hauling them ashore ; nor have we the 
Cornish organization. Never a haul is made with- 
out all hands acknowledging, though not in so 
many words, that it ought to have been done 
better. 

Yet nothing can destroy the fascination of 
seining, because it takes place so often when sea 
and sky are at their loveliest; and for that reason 
— not simply on account of the excitement — 
hauls with the seine stay fresher in one's mind than 
almost any other fishing turn-outs. Benjie would 
certainly show surprise were he reminded how 
many years it is since he made his last wonderful 
night of long-hauls. On a Sunday evening he 
came across beach: What's say if us shoves off 
the seine-boat an' makes a haul or two? Water's 
nice an' thick. Tide's just right.' 

'Sunday evening, ain't it? Thought thee 



160 ALONGSHORE m 

di'sn't do no Sunday work,' replied the regular 
hands, togged up in their best clothes and starch- 
collars. 

'Aye,' returned Benjie, whose Sabbath is a 
fisherman's, and lasts from sunset on Saturday till 
sunset on Sunday. ; Might pick up a few shillings 
up under the eastern cliff. There's some fine soles 
to Kicking Donkey. I've a-see'd 'em. Thee ca'st 
change thy clothes, casn'?' 

"Taint wuth it. All right t'morrow, looks so.' 

*I bain't going to stay home for no best clothes,' 
flashed Benjie. 'Lord! 'twould ha' gie'd they 
there ol' fishermen fits, I reckon, if they was to 
come back from the grave, for all they used to 
wear high-poll hats week-days and Sundays alike. 
Fine soles they be, too. Here's off.' 

Accordingly, he picked up a volunteer crew and 
shoved off. 

We made an ordinary haul to the west of the 
town, and another from the beach. The Sunday 
evening promenaders collected round. 'My 
senses! let's get out o' this,' exclaimed Benjie; so 
we went up under the eastern cliff, where we knew 
that Sunday boots and shoes would never follow 
us along the shingle. There we started long- 
hauling. 



i" LONG-HAULING 161 

The shore faces almost due south, and we 
worked from west to east; but instead of bringing 
the eastern arm of the seine semicircular-wise back 
to the beach, it was shot out almost straight in a 
south-easterly direction. The boat rowed towards 
shore as far as the grass rope would reach; a 
grapnel was put down for anchor; and the three of 
them aboard, sitting down and swinging to it as if 
they were rowing, hauled on the grass rope till the 
eastern arm of the net came level with the boat. 
Having taken up the grapnel, they again rowed 
towards shore, paying out the rope, and again they 
anchored and hauled in their end of the net 
another rope's length. Finally, paying out the 
rope a third time, they reached the shore itself and 
went on hauling therefrom. 

We worked all night, the eight of us, four on 
each arm of the seine — shooting, long-hauling, 
boating the net, boxing the fish, shifting further 
east, and shooting again. Eight hauls we made. 
The harvest moon rose red above the horizon; 
climbed the sky; bathed sea and cliffs in a silvery 
shimmer. Before us was the limitless water and a 
moonglade that stretched to the end of sight; 
above us the cliffs seemed to reach right up to the 
tranquil star-splashed heavens; and underneath, 

M 



1 62 ALONGSHORE m 

on a narrow strip of shingle, netting a little strip 
of sea, we laboured till dawn was heralded by a 
change in the colour of the moonlight. Thereupon, 
with aching backs and stiff sore hands, keeping as 
close as possible to the water's edge for fear any 
cliff should fall upon us, we tramped along a couple 
of miles of shingle home. On the beach, before peo- 
ple were about, Benjie sorted the fish, distributed 
some for breakfast, and wished us 'Good morning !' 
to bed. There were not, after all, many soles. 

Benjie it was, too, who brought about the great 
catch of bass. Long before it was light, one 
summer's morning, he came in house. 

'Hi ! Be there ? Wake up ! Tell Jim to turn 
out. The bass be in upon the sand to Western 
Bay. I've see'd 'em — like a shoal o' gert salmon — 
see'd 'em there this two or three mornings. Us 
can make a haul o' they. There's a kettle o' 
boiling water up to my house, if thee's care to 
bring up the tay-pot. Time 'nuff for that. Ah ! 
they'll be there come peep o' day. Us'll hae 'em !' 
We drank our cup o' tay, sitting round the 
kitchen ready-booted, and by the first glimmer 
of daylight we rowed the seine-boat and a punt 
across Broken Rocks to Western Bay. Benjie 
crept alongshore. 



Ill 



BASS 163 



The tide was dead low upon the flat sand, and 
in the shallow wash hundreds of bass, their back- 
fins sticking out of the water, were chasing, and 
feeding on, the sand-eels. Very quietly we shot 
the seine-net around a likely shoal, then hauled 
with the utmost care, so that not a single sunken 
cork nor a trip of the foot-rope should leave a way 
of escape. 

As the seine came in the bass swam madly 
round, like a fleet of green-backed torpedoes 
gone amuck. We dragged, lifted, and lurched 
the punt nearly clear of the sea. And at that 
moment the tide turned. It flowed in round our 
feet, flowed under, above, and through the net. 
On all sides bass found just enough water to turn 
themselves the right way up and swim. Out they 
darted, gave a flip or two, and were gone. To 
have hauled the net still higher would have meant 
losing more. Into the water we plunged, there- 
fore, the six of us who were there, catching the bass 
by their tails, hooking our fingers under their gills, 
scooping them out upon the dry sand, throwing 
them into the punt, and even kicking them up the 
beach. Their sharp dorsal fins and the spines 
upon their gills tore our hands till the blood came. 
Some of them, when they flapped, were too strong 



i6 4 ALONGSHORE 



III 



to hold. Fully as many as we caught must have 
got clean away. 

But it was with ftve hundredweight or so in 
the punt that I went off home. And while I was 
sheaving across Broken Rocks the sun rose, orange- 
coloured and immense, above the eastern cliffs. 
The sea lighted up, faint pink and blue, as if it 
had been a vast glow-lamp. That, above all, is 
the sight which comes into my mind with recollec- 
tions of seining. Often at night, about bedtime, 
Jim says, Well, let's get up-over, and see what 
the morrow '11 bring forth.' When, returning 
home from seining at peep o' day, I see the sun 
rise so, upon a grey land and sea, above the eastern 
cliff, it seems to me not that the morrow is being 
brought forth — which would be simply dawn — 
but that the morrow is bringing forth what the 
morrow has in store; that the future, up there, is 
looking down upon us with steady eye. 



17. A GLUT OF MACKEREL 

'/ NEVER see'd the like o' it before, not all the 
years I been out to beach.' 

'G'out! I have then; an' more o'em too, an' 
bigger mackerel; gert schools o'em, when they 
used to catch 'em in the seine by scores o' 
thousands, an' pack 'em an' send 'em in wagons 
to Exeter, afore anybody was troubled wi' thic 
humbugging ol' railway, keeping o'ee waiting an' 
not returning your empties. . . .' 

'Aye! gert schools o'em p'raps; but have 'ee 
ever see'd 'em like now, all along touching the 
beach from the eastern cliff to Western Bay, miles 
o'em wi'out a break, so thick as the pebbles they'm 
jumping out on?' 

'That may be. But I tell thee what I have 
a-see'd: I've see'd 'em fetch their price, which this 
lot won't never do, n'eet no fish never won't again 

165 



1 66 ALONGSHORE m 

in this here rotten, cranky, fools' harbour of a 
place. . . . 'Tis a shame to catch the poor things 
what you can't sell. Lord ! when I thinks of what 
't used to be an' what 'tis got to now. They there 
fish-buyers won't always hae everything their own 
way. You see, though I shan't be here to see it 
very likely. Their time '11 come; always does 
come to they sort that grinds them as an't got 
nort an' takes away the fruits o' others' labour; 
labour what they couldn't do theirselves, not if 
they was paid for it. . . .' 

The first speaker was a man that has done 
fishing as a standby, without being altogether a 
fisherman; the second, an old fisherman who has 
seen the great days when five times as many 
drifters used to put to sea of an evening; who in 
the hungry days before that was sometimes glad to 
pick up a crust of bread; and who, now that he 
has outlived both, scorns with barbed words our 
jog-trot, latter-day habit of fishing when there 
is nothing more profitable to do, and selling the 
catches how we can. He himself fishes when he 
is minded, no matter what else is doing. Hardly 
a big catch for the last fifty years that he cannot 
recollect in all particulars — who caught it, where 
and how they fished, the number of the catch, and 



in A BAD SEASON 167 

how it sold — once he can track it back among his 
crowded memories. 

The truth seems to be, as regards this year's 
glut of mackerel, that they have seldom or never 
come so close to shore in such numbers, in one 
vast shoal of no one knows what extent, instead 
of broken up into schools. Something must be 
allowed to the fact that the old man was not speak- 
ing to a lifelong fisherman. And something on 
the other side must also be allowed to the so 
sudden, the almost dramatic appearance of the 
mackerel after a season's scarcity, just when it was 
being said along the beach: 'Aye! This year's 
mackerel's done. They an't come an' they bain't 
coming. They've got their own minds to please 
so well as you an' me. See'd it aforetime, an't us?' 

Of May and June mackerel, which fetch good 
prices, the drifters caught only dozens. Early in 
July some of the nets were washed, barked, dried, 
and put away; to be brought out again later in 
the month, when a few hundreds were being 
brought ashore by the remaining drifters. Not 
till August was the first thousand caught, and at 
that time of year they were worth very little, 
because they are a fish which travels badly in hot 
weather. It was worse with the hookers, who 



1 68 ALONGSHORE m 

usually start towards the end of July, and catch 
the mackerel on lines trailed behind sailing boats, 
their bait a bright strip of skin cut from a mack- 
erel's tail. Up to the middle of August the best 
catch was six dozen in a day, when it should have 
been two or three hundred (ten dozen to the hun- 
dred) by breakfast time. Hooking was not worth 
while, except with frights aboard prepared to pay 
for their sailing, whatever the sport. And with 
the seine-nets it was worst of all. Once in July 
three hundred and a half fair-sized mackerel were 
hauled ashore; otherwise such shots as were made 
resulted mainly in seaweed and sand-crabs, with at 
most a dozen or two small mackerel. The absence 
of the early mackerel we could explain; for they 
are known to live in the spring on tiny marine 
organisms and larvae, whereas later on, in the 
summer, they chase and devour the shoals of fish- 
fry that we call brit, and people eat as whitebait. 
(Hence the uselessness of trying to hook them on 
baits in imitation of small fish till the latter half of 
the season.) This year, owing to continued easterly 
winds, the temperature of the water was five 
degrees below normal — a difference very consider- 
able to microscopic life. Had the early mackerel 
come into the bay they would in all probability 



Ill 



FORESTALLED 169 



have found their food, if not unhatched or un- 
grown, at any rate comparatively scarce. On the 
other hand, we cannot explain why they still kept 
away after the brit had become plentiful, unless, 
being out in the colder deep water, it took them 
a month or so to find out what a feast was waiting 
for them alongshore. 

Come they did, however, at last; hungry and 
in multitudes. 

About twilight, at the end of August, a few 
little schools of small mackerel played up inshore. 
It was Sunday, and the sea roughish; nobody 
troubled to shoot seine. Next morning I was out 
on the beach before it was fully daylight, in order 
to make sure that the boats were clear of high tide. 
Nothing was to be seen; the gulls were not 
screaming; nor was anybody about. The air was 
cold; full of dew. I went back to bed. And 
when I got up a couple of hours later, Jim was 
saying, 'The mackerel's been in; I know'd they 
'ould; an' they chaps from t'other end have a-shot 
seine an' catched two or three thousand right under 
our boats. If we'd been out a bit earlier, we'd 
have had they.' 

'I was out,' I said. 'Out before daylight, to 
see the boats were all right.' 



170 ALONGSHORE m 

'Why di'sn't stay out, then, till 'twas daylight? 
Nice little haul that'd ha' been — day's work afore 
breakfast. Us have a-missed thic bit lying in bed.' 

'You were in bed. . . .' 

'You might so well ha* been!' 

The drifters came in with several thousand a 
boat. Immediately prices fell. After breakfast 
two or three large hauls — chiefly of small fish — 
were again made by the men from the other end. 
Buyers refused to deal. Mackerel were left on 
the beach. 

During that day, while the sun was high in the 
sky, the fish held off. They were not, it seemed, 
on the feed. Hookers caught nothing extra- 
ordinary. But at sundown the shout went up, 
'There they be ! Lookse ! there they be again, 
all alongshore !' 

'Let 'em bide,' said fishermen. 'They bain't 
wuth the bother o' catching.' 

'There they be! There they be!' urged the 
beachcombers and loafers, who wanted a few 
mackerel for breakfast, or half-a-dozen to sell 
for a drink, and knew that after the haul was 
made they would not be troubled with the net 
or boat. 'There they be ! Right under your 
nose!' they cried. 'Can't help but catch 'em.' 



NO BOXES 171 

'What's say?' asked Richard. 'Shall us have 
a go for the sport o'it, like? Might wash out 
the net.' 

We shot seine from the westward end of the 
beach for about five hundred good-sized fish 
and two or three thousand small ones, all of 
which we brought back together in the punt, 
where they lay in a glittering heap, the under 
ones half squashed, the top ones flapping their 
tails, gasping with wide-open gills, and tattooing 
violently as mackerel will do before they die; 
their living brightness fading all the while. We 
sent for the buyers. They held aloof. We 
shouted for boxes: 'These here'd sell up- 
country; might get summut for 'em.' Boxes 
were not to be had; they were all gone away 
full. Till long after dark one or other of us 
was out by the boat, trying to sell our catch in 
three-ha'p'orths and three-pennyworths — three- 
pence a dozen the small fish, and sixpence, or what 
we could get, for the large. 

Next morning — the day on which the mackerel 
were thickest and closest inshore — we threw back 
the remainder of our haul. It was no use leaving 
it in the boat to rot. As far along as eye could 
see the water was all of a splash with brit jumping 



172 ALONGSHORE 



in 



right out of the sea upon the beach, and mackerel 
chasing them. Many of the fish we had thrown 
back were washed up again. We tossed them to 
the gulls, who simply squatted on the water a few 
yards out and blinked at us. They too, even the 
gulls, were fed up. 

All day long the hookers made big catches. 
In the evening it was found that to catch mackerel 
there was no need to do more than drop overboard 
a yard or so of line, baited, but without a lead. A 
bright bare hook would catch them. Very soon, 
scarcely a boat or line was left upon the beach. 
The sea was crowded with people rowing up and 
down shore as close in as possible. Some visitors 
found a kind of sport in tossing out lines from 
the beach and dragging them in again. Which 
wasn't good for the lines. 

Seen from a boat, looking down into the water, 
the mackerel were like a dark green river flowing 
alongshore in the flood-tide — a river within a 
river; and across the beach, in the glow of sun- 
set, the hopping brit that had been chased out of 
the water were like an endless band of gems. 
Under the splash of an oar the mackerel scattered 
for a moment, but the smoother motion of the 
boat they took no notice of. Some had small 



Ill 



NOT AT A GIFT 173 



fish in their mouths. Others worried the bait 
like a pack of dogs, snapping at it, shaking it, 
and being hustled out of the way by their fellows. 
It was easy that evening to verify what we had 
long suspected — namely, that mackerel take brit 
or bait not by the tail but by the head. Swiftest 
of fish, they swim up to and even past their prey, 
turn partly round, seize it from the side, and 
swallow it head-first. For that reason the tackle- 
makers' artificial baits with hooks behind them 
are less successful than our strips of mackerel 
skin, which have the hooks in front; and that is 
why a score of fish can be caught on the same 
bait without its being much damaged. Eight out 
of ten could be seen to attack the bait that way. 

But there was small sport in catching fish that 
would not keep off the hook; no satisfaction in 
killing what would not sell. At sundown the 
sailing hookers rowed ashore — for the sea was a 
white calm — with several dozens each. Hardly 
anybody was willing to buy fine mackerel at eight- 
pence the dozen, or at sixpence, or even at four- 
pence. We asked people to take them away. 
'Hae 'em at a gift,' we said. 

'No fear!' they replied. 'Enough's as good 
as a feast.' 



174 ALONGSHORE 

A message came from not a hundred miles 
up-country that mackerel there would fetch five 
shillings a hundred; and still no boxes were to 
be had. 

Mackerel lay in the boats, in buckets, in heaps 
on the beach and along the sea-wall. Every 
other person on the Front had mackerel dangling 
from his hand. In all directions one's eye caught 
the shine of them. 'Go'n see/ we said to the 
kids, 'if thee ca'st sell half-a-dozen. Gie thee a 
'ap'ny out o' it.' 

'Git 'ome !' they retorted. Til gie thee a 
sweet out o' my next 'ap'orth if thee ca'st sell 
dree.' 

And still the mackerel were playing up all 
alongshore. 

In a light which made everything seem shadowy 
and distant, even the sound of voices and the 
crunching of shingle; tired, as much with the 
confusion and chatter as with rowing and hauling, 
— we stood upon the beach waiting for the rest 
of the boats to come in. We waited and looked 
around. 

'A bloody slaughter, that's all 'tis!' said 
Richard at last; and for once the expression was 
appropriate. 



THE BLOOD-RED LIGHT 175 

To the south-east, over the sea, the moon was 
rising blood-red above a bank of low-lying cloud. 
Blood-red light from it glistened on the heaps of 
mackerel, on the mackerel in people's hands, on 
the mackerel that were being hauled aboard the 
boats still afloat, on the mackerel scales that 
spattered our faces and clothes, and on the line 
of brit along high-water mark. The very shadows, 
the blackening darkness itself, were tinged blood- 
red. It was as if a miasma had arisen from the 
thousands of dead fish; as if the blood of their 
slaughter were settling upon our heads. 

'For God's sake/ said Richard, 'let's get in 
out o'it!' 

Over our beer we discussed the price and 
worth of mackerel; their value as food and their 
value during a glut. 'They'm never wuth less'n 
eightpence a dozen,' argued one. 

'Thee's better try an' get it t'morrow!' said 
another. 

But in the night the wind shifted, the mackerel 
sheered off, and next day they were clean gone. 
Again they were worth wholesale their eightpence 
a dozen; and it was better so. 



IV 



177 



N 



1 8. BEACHCOMBINGS 

'Good-morning!' that and no more, is good 
enough for town. 'Good-day!' the countryman's 
older-fashioned greeting, has the advantage of 
suiting itself to times and persons. 'Dirty day!' 
alongshore changes back on land, where rain pelts 
down gentlier and the wind is less felt, into that 
most comfortless of optimisms, 'Nice growing 
weather!' On the sea-wall, from those who 
have an interest in the fishing, 'Nice beach now!' 
is a common form of salutation,whenever there 
happens to be a good beach and often when there 
is not. For the beach is hardly less variable than 
the weather, and only those who have boat-hauling 
to do ever know its state accurately. 

Ordinarily it descends to the water in a series 
of banks, called cops — a flight, as it were, of 
great irregular steps with slopes, flats, or even 
hollows between them. (Better to wait the tide 

179 



180 ALONGSHORE 

at anchor than to run in with a load of nets and 
herrings against a steep cop, and have the boat 
swamped before she can be hauled out of the 
water.) Breezes, calms, and land winds leave the 
beach in cops, the lowest of them marking the 
height of the last tide. Neap-tides in settled 
weather, shortening daily, leave each a small cop, 
which is -smoothed out again when the spring- 
tides lengthen and rise. But a gale of wind from 
the sea, which carries the pebbles alongshore 
almost as if they were snowflakes drifting, and 
shifts incalculable tons of shingle — that leaves the 
beach smoothest of all. It makes a clean sweep, 
and should it be from the west of south, blowing 
up-channel with the flood, it bares the shore right 
down to its marly foundations. Old wooden 
stakes, rounded and rotten, come back to light: 
like blackened heads they are, and they give one 
a feeling that the old times are staring at us out 
of the beach in which long ago they were buried. 
The larger pebbles vanish, swept along and cov- 
ered over with small. All the shore is left with a 
surface of gritty shingle, caked together near the 
foot of it with hard black mud. 

That is the beachcombers' chance. Fishermen 
themselves, usually contemptuous of beachcombers, 



iv UNBURIED VALUABLES 181 

turn to and join in the hunt. 'When there's nort 
else to do an' p'raps thee ca'st pick up the price o' 
a drink quick. . . .' While the great seas, break- 
ing well out, are pounding the foot of the beach 
and are rushing up it slantwise, so that the swish 
of each run and the rattle of the under-tow sound 
all one, without any break, men stand along the 
sea-wall and nod prophetically. 

'This here'll shift summut,' says one in much 
the same tone as an old woman speaks of death 
shifting her neighbour into the next world. 

'This'll strip it down to the bare bones,' echoes 
another. 

And then the treasonable hope peeps out — 
treasonable because a beach good for combing is 
as bad as can be for boats. 

'Lady lost a gold watch hereabout last summer.' 

'Thic won't be wuth much time it's found, if 
ever 'tis.' 

'Must ha' been some money dropped, too, wi' 
all they there people squat about.' 

'I've a-know'd sovereigns found. 01' Jimmy 
Steer picked up three or four besides sil'er after 
thic gale — must be up thirty year ago now. Aye, 
an' spade guineas ! I found one, only didn't do to 
say so at the time, else they'd ha' been a'ter 'ee for 



1 82 ALONGSHORE * 

to get 'en out o'ee. Smith, the jeweller, dropped 
some liquor on it out o' a little bottle, an' said t'was 
gold. Give'd me dree-an'-six for it, he did.' 
'They'm wuth more'n that.' 
'That's what 'er give'd me for 'en, anyhow.' 
'Some o'ee always has all the luck. . . .' 
'Us don't hae what us don't earn; n'eet so 
much. I tell 'ee there's plenty to be found down 
under beach if you'm minded to look for't when 
'tis there. There's never no knowing what thee 
ca'st pick up.' 

There's never no knowing. And, indeed, at 
low tide during or after a gale, the beach looks a 
wildish place that, like the sea itself, may yield up 
who knows what. So long as fine weather lasts, 
town and sea merge, and to most longshoremen 
the sea is the more familiar. In a storm the two 
part company; the boundary between them is 
clean-cut; the beach is that boundary. It be- 
longed to the town by usage; now for a while 
it is the sea's. Boats, the handiwork of man, his 
implements, which had, as it were, domesticated 
the shore, are in safety upon the top of the wall. 
One long shallow curve, of shingle flecked with 
spindrift, extends to the water's edge, increasing 
for the eye all distances upon the beach, and lending 



IV 



AT LOW TIDE 183 



it some of the waste greatness, as well as the wild- 
ness of the gale. Down at the bottom — far off it 
seems now — the shoal water of low tide froths, 
tosses, and cries upon the sand. 

There the beachcombers go, not as if they 
wanted to find something, but as if they were 
minded to take a stroll by the waves, for their 
health's sake or to meditate. They foot it featly 
by the sea's margin — 

Do chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him 
When he comes back. 

Demy-puppets they look, down there; small, 
remote, not altogether real, in the misty spray that 
blows off the sea, and against the sea's grandeur. 
With philosophic gait one walks along; not 
stooping much (because he's subject to lumbago) 
but peering steadfastly, and occasionally turning 
over a stone with his boot, or scratching with his 
toes like an old hen. Another ventures too far 
after treasure, tucks up his legs beneath him, and 
jumps askew, lest a wave fill his only pair of boots. 
Another might be gleaning, his back is so bent 
and he picks up so much of no worth. Boys run 
into the water, rejoicing in wet feet. Whatever 
are they doing down there?' asks the stranger. 
'Has anybody lost anything?' 



1 84 ALONGSHORE 



IV 



'No'm, not as I knows of,' replies the witty 
man on top. 'Nothing except their senses. 
They'm looking for what ain't there.' 

What is there includes usually some copper 
coins, battered and corroded, a few blackened 
silver pieces, bits of old brass and of copper wire, 
nails, bolts, keys, and a selection of all the house- 
hold scrap-iron that has been thrown away into the 
sea or river. Presently the rising tide drives the 
beachcombers back to dry land. If they have not 
earned the price of a drink, if they have not gained 
enough to pay for their spoilt shoe-leather, at least 
they have had their chance. The sea is like that. 
It gives men in payment not their due earnings, 
but the chance of more or less. It is a gamble. 
Were it not so, seafaring proper, as opposed to 
mere sea-trading, would come to an end. 

Men comb the beach for trifles. Relentlessly 
the beach combs the town for men. More 
human wrecks are stranded on it than ever wrecks 
from the sea. Fishermen are those able to brave 
its chances and live, or as they themselves more 
often put it, 'pick up a living one way an' t'other.' 
In their youth they are usually put to some trade. 
But the beach is still there; that they bear always 
in mind. It is at once a haven and a venture; it 



iv HUMAN DERELICTS 185 

appeals both to their hunger for peace and their 
thirst for the fray. If their labour irks them; if 
they get into trouble; if they lose their job, — 
then back they come to the beach, seldom to leave 
it, however loudly with their tongues they may 
regret a fixed wage, a regular life, and work that's 
done when it is done. 

Landsmen stranded upon the beach, who cannot 
follow up the fishing sufficiently to become fisher- 
men — not every man can do it, by any means, — 
they remain derelict. They make the beach what it 
so curiously and exactly is, a copy in small of the 
great industrial world, with its employed, its 
unemployed, its unemployables, and its men who, 
having no heart except for certain particular sorts 
of work, will half starve rather than force them- 
selves to any other. They come — God knows 
how they come there ! Each coming is a tragedy, 
and usually a comedy as well. The beach is the 
town's look-out. What more natural than that 
a man out of work should drift there to stand 
about and chat? Maybe the herrings are in: 
hard frosty weather is their time. Fishermen pay 
generously for unskilled help, just when they 
want it. Then, by being ready and waiting to 
lend a hand, there is money to be earned, and an 



1 86 ALONGSHORE w 

air of busyness and jollity to work in. But they 
employ no one regularly; they cannot provide 
work in the slack seasons when they have little or 
none themselves. Hands often lent become soon 
unfit to sell. A drink, which establishes no pre- 
cedent of pay, is all they are worth, is all they 
get; and perhaps some fish thrown out with a 
'There thee a't for thy supper !' It is no good 
to make a parade of starvation along the beach. 
There is no one there to appreciate it as a spectacle, 
unless it be visitors who are as likely as not to say, 
'Nasty man! why don't you keep him out of 
sight?' (Not so likely, however, as those who 
make money out of visitors.) Nearly every one else 
has had an acquaintance with emptiness at one time 
or another, and may easily experience it again; 
which spoils it as a show. To become fixed in men's 
minds as a proper beachcomber, as a man of odd 
jobs, a man waiting for what may turn up, is to 
find the whole little world in an unconscious con- 
spiracy to preserve that standing. Every greeting, 
every copper in payment and the way it is handed 
over, every kindness even, frames itself naturally 
to that end. When a man can be chaffed publicly 
on his being a beachcomber, then indeed he is 
one, and only a more than human energy, or 



iv OL' MUSSELS 187 

the policeman's — for some trivial offence against 
respectability — -can wrench him from it. There 
he is; there he stands waiting in weather-worn 
clothes that were not made for labour; there he 
has his being and his pipe. It gives one a turn 
sometimes to think: 'That man I was joking 
with out to beach just now has nothing to eat and 
doesn't know how to get anything. How on 
earth can he crack jokes?' Or, on the other 
hand, to hear some hard-working man remark, 
l OV Mussels, he don't trouble hisself about nort, 
an' he's just so happy, seems so, as them that do. 
Nice quiet chap, 01' Mussels. There's plenty 
would employ him if they could, 'cause he's a fine 
man at his trade; only if you gives 'en a job you 
can't be always running down to beach after him. 
There isn't no dependence to be placed in him, 
that's how 'tis.' He has, in fact, placed all his 
dependence on the sea, and on those who do that 
there is no dependence to be placed. He exists, 
he succeeds in existing, at constant low water. 
What can anybody do? Active doing, in such a 
case, requires a sense of superiority, and when it 
comes to the point one cannot escape an uncom- 
fortable feeling that the likes of 01' Mussels have 
solved some of the problems of existence better 



1 88 ALONGSHORE ™ 

than oneself has solved, has had occasion to solve, 
or ever will solve them. If we were out in a boat 
together, and had to hard up for our lives, what 
would be the difference? Perhaps OP Mussels 
would find it easier to laugh, then, too. 

Besides, we who frequent the beach are all of 
us beachcombers more or less, one way or another* 
It is a habit one gets into, a vice — one of those 
vices that cannot be eradicated without loss, because, 
for the time of indulgence at all events, they 
quicken life, and are therefore rooted in life itself. 
Nor, on the beach, is that quickening a mere 
illusion. It hardly seems as if the men who stand 
there hour after hour, hands in pockets, are living 
faster than they could otherwise do. Yet so it is. 
To be absent for an hour is to miss something, or 
the chance of something. A boat may be wanted. 
A ship may make signals for some one to go out 
to her. Fish may play up and seine be shot. A 
change in the weather may pass unnoticed. The 
tides are never to time, and want watching. 

'What time was it high water?' 

'Don' know. Wasn't out here.' 

'Oh! That's it, is it? Do 'ee know what 
time 'tis dinner?' 

'That there depends on the tide, don' it?' 



iv < NEVER NO KNOWING' 189 

For the beach is more than a place of trade. 
It is the narrow channel through which the con- 
verging tides of a longshoreman's life flow, from 
the sea where he works to land where he lives, and 
back again to the sea by which he lives. On the 
beach, high and low tide, and that tide in the 
affairs of men, join forces, and are watched as one. 

'Just turned out then?' is the first question 
asked, should one stay in house till noon; the 
inference being that only bed would keep a man 
away. A man on the beach, as he describes 
himself professionally, seldom strays far on land; 
and then as often as not to some vantage point 
whence he can view the shore or sea. His first 
move, on coming downstairs in the morning, is to 
walk out to beach; after his cup o' tay, if it can 
be had quickly, but before, for a peep out over, 
if the kettle is long a-boiling. When there is 
nothing doing, he will spend the whole day 
chattering on the sea-wall about old times, or 
walking every half-hour from the beach into house, 
from his house back to the beach. The sea alone 
can keep him long away from it; and for this 
reason, that as a place of never no knowing the 
beach is only bested by the sea. 



19- FLOTSAM AND JETSAM 

SouVesterly winds rake the beach out. A south- 
easterly gale — Benjie's Lord Runkum, Lord of the 
Longshore — piles up the shingle till all that the 
common beachcomber values is buried deeply 
underneath. But at the same time it blows from 
the Channel into the bay, and scatters alongshore 
the miscellaneous flotsam and jetsam of the sea, in 
which, after prawns and lobsters, Benjie takes his 
greatest delight. For Benjie is no ordinary beach- 
comber. While these men are grubbing about on 
the beach in front of the town, he stands on the 
sea-wall and sniffs, digs his hands into his pockets, 
turns his back on so pitiful a sight, and talks of 
what was seen in the old times. 'They there 
bain't fit for nort else,' he says with a shrug of the 
shoulders. 'My senses! I've a-see'd so much 
picked up in one tide, up 'long or down under 
cliff, as they there mumpheads '11 find if they 

190 



SEA-KNOWLEDGE 191 

scratches about till their time comes. Only 'tis 
too far, where I goes, for the likes o' they. Them 
steamers ha' spoilt the best o'it; they keeps so far 
out, don't ratch [reach] into the bay like proper 
sailing vessels; an' if they'm wrecked — poor things, 
that's wrecked! how I do pity 'em, to be sure! — 
or if they has to heave their deck-cargo overboard, 
it don't wash in hereabout. Why, I mind thic 
schooner coming ashore in Western Bay. . . . 
Twenty thousand deals her had aboard! Bain't 
sure I an't got some o'em up to my house now. 
There's a schooner ashore up to Chesil Beach, they 
tells me. Breaking up, her is. 'Tis 'bout time 
us had a south-easter for a change. Then some 
o' her'll be down here along. Lord Runkum's the 
boy. I'll hae some o'it. You wait till Lord 
Runkum comes along. You wait!' 

So long as Benjie talks aloud, one thing is 
certain; that very little is to be found either up 
east or down west under the cliff. It is when an 
ancient sea-knowledge of winds and currents is 
called for, to predict in exactly what spot a piece 
of flotsam sighted at sea will be cast ashore; when 
daily and nightly watchfulness is needed to save the 
jetsam from being washed off again by rising tides, 
that his turn comes. And then he says nothing. 



192 ALONGSHORE iv 

One calm cold January morning after a south- 
easterly gale, while the ground-swell was still 
ambling in from that quarter and as lazily urging 
itself up the beach, we met on the wall in a hail- 
fellow conversation. Without break in the flow 
of his talk, without even a change of tone, Benjie 
lowered his voice to secrecy. 'Aye, 'tis bad,' 
he had been saying, 'this here ground-swell keep- 
ing up. You can't get out easy after the herrings 
— and when you can there's hardly enough for to 
make it worth while. They won't hang about 
in the bay wi' this scuffle. . . . 

"Twouldn't do,' he went on very quietly, 
"twouldn't do for to get catched down there. . . .' 

'Catched where?' 

'Why, down west; if this here little draught 
from the north-east'ard was to freshen or drop 
out more east, an' us couldn't row home again. 
But there, us could haul up to Refuge Cove an' 
walk home, sure 'nuff; only I wants to go west 
o' that, west o' Dog's Tooth Ledge, when I 
goes. . . . 

'This swell' — he raised his voice for a pass- 
erby to hear — 'it don't go down like it ought to. 
Must be blowing fresh outside now. . . . 

'After that' — speaking softly again — "tisn't 



LANDLOCK BAY 193 

too bad for to shove off the little boat; if you 
gets it on a nice greasy way. What's say? Be 
'ee up for a bit of a pull? Ought to be summut 
washed in down to Landlock Bay. 'Tis there, 
right 'nuff, if nobody an't been; an' I knows 
they an't, 'cause I was down there on foot while 
'twas blowing two days agone. An' I got some 
bits o' wood stored up in the cliff, what I put 
there two or three months back, if none o' they 
thieving hellers an't been an' walked it off for 
me. Might so well bring that home too. You 
be out here 'bout two this a'ternoon if you'm 
minded an' an't got nort else on. Us'll hae some 
sport down 'long.' 

By half-past two we were afloat. 'They'm 
wondering where we'm off to,' remarked Benjie, 
emptying the water out of his boots and nodding 
towards the figures that were ranged along the 
wall. 'Let 'em wonder! They should ha' been 
where I was last night when 'twas raining, an' 
blowing — an' dark. Then they'd ha' know'd. 
Beautiful afternoon 'tis, to be sure.' 

The oily sleepy ground-swell, lifting the boat 
as it flowed shoreward and witnessing that storms 
had been; the absence of other boats on the 
water; the processional sound of the breakers, 

o 



194 ALONGSHORE w 

approaching, culminating, and dying away in the 
distance, one after another; the very certainty 
that at the time of year such fine weather could 
not last long — all alike served to intensify the 
utter peacefulness of a January dead-calm. Near 
the southern horizon a winterly sun shone brightly, 
but without warmth or glow, as if it were hung 
there merely, and had no part in life on earth. 
On the tall red cliffs it cast a faint mistiness — 
hardly a mistiness so much as a haze of colour — 
that, far from obscuring them, brought every 
crack and pinnacle into prominence against the 
sky, and suggested only that there was sleep upon 
the face of them — an infinite, world-wide repose. 

Notwithstanding which, the sky itself was 
fresh, clear, and deep, and in our nostrils the air 
was keen. 

Benjie sat in the stern of the boat, a little 
human spot aggressively alive in the midst of the 
calm. 'Keep her in,' he urged, 'keep her in; so 
close as you can hug wi'out knocking ashore. The 
last of the flood must still be running up 'long. 
Keep her in out o'it. Us'll get there all the 
sooner. By sea, I tell 'ee, the longest way round 
is oftener'n not the shortest way there. An' so 
'tis wi' people too, only they full-sail cracking-on 



iv WATER-WALLOPERS 195 

mazed-heads, what tries to lord it over 'ee, don' 
know it. But I've a-proved. . . . Look out, 
you ! Put her bows to it. Thic swell's going to 
break outside. 'Tis shoal-water in here.' 

Three breaking waves passed under us, making 
the boat sit on her stern like a dog upon its 
haunches. 'That's right!' said Benjie. 'I don't 
want a bathe wi' my clothes on, an' I'm certain 
sure I bain't going to undress an' make an 
exhibition o' my nakedness like they there summer 
water-wallopers.' 

From the old sack that he usually carries over 
his shoulder Benjie drew out an implement not 
unlike a short reaping hook, with a handle at each 
end, and proceeded to whet it on a flat, rough- 
grained pebble. 'Don' know what that's for, do 
'ee?' he asked, making the motions of a spoke- 
shave. 'You'll see, please God, afore this 
afternoon's out, if what I wants it for is still 
where I lef it. Ah! nobody don' know what I 
got in my bag o' mysteries. But they want to. 
Back t'other day one o' they papern-collared poops 
stops me up over cliff: "Hi, ol' fellah! what have 
you got in your sack?" 

'"Hullo, young 'un!" says I, "what you got 
in your pockets? When you turns out they, I'll 



196 ALONGSHORE 



IV 



turn out my bag, an' not afore. If you'd gone 
where I been, 'long wi' me, you'd know. But 
you can't go where I goes. You'd tire o'it, the 
likes o' you would. You'd get your feet wet." 

1 "No offence, me man," says he. 

' "Then don't you go out o' your way to give 
it for the future," says I. "My sack's my pocket 
— remember that. T'others have got holes in 'em. 
I wishes you good afternoon." 

'Lord ! they sort couldn't go where I goes. 
They an't got it in 'em, not to go twice, an' day 
after day, if they goes once just for curiosity. 
'Tis funny how they hates to see the likes o' me 
carrying a bag they can't look into, they four-meal- 
a-day soft-sleepers. Thinks I got game or rabbits, 
I s'pose. Thic day, as't happened, I did hae a 
young rabbit what I'd picked up down under cliff 
— failed out an' killed itself. 'Twas just so well 
for me to hae a dinner off o'en as for the gulls. 
'Tisn't 's if I wired 'em or trapped 'em. I never 
does that. I couldn't bear for to kill the poor 
little things. They enjoys their life so well as 
you an' me. Hast ever felt it going out warm 
under thy hands ? I have ; an' I don't want to no 
more. Wi' fish 'tis different. They'm cold- 
blooded. . . . Little bit out 'n' west, you.' 



iv FALLING CLIFFS 197 

Hard cliffs of igneous stone, which stand un- 
changed within the memory of man, have little in 
common with the generations that flicker across 
earth. There is nothing human about them. 
Ours — of a red marl that in places is all but mud — 
change ceaselessly; they are ruins never ruined; 
they are partners in our fragility; and it is, I 
think, because they crumble and fall and age 
visibly that we look on them with so careful, 
so friendly, an eye, and speak of them always with 
a tinge of regret, as one speaks of an old man who 
is no longer what he was. To leave them and 
then come back is like returning to a familiar 
house that has been altered into something more 
and something less than home. Pinnacles that 
jutted boldly into the sky, buttresses that appeared 
to be a support have fallen into water-washed 
heaps upon the beach below. Springs have ended 
by breaking down the patches they decked with 
greenery. The tide flows streaky-red with fallen 
land. New cracks have opened, are opening all 
the time. 

Benjie has frequented the beaches and rocks 
under cliff night and day for sixty years. While 
he crouched on the stern-seat and, with a 
strange mingling of lament for change, and 



198 ALONGSHORE 

triumph at having outlived it, recited in a sing- 
song voice his tale of long past years, I wished 
that I, too, could glimpse the pictures that were 
crowding his mind's eye, of fair weather and foul 
under his cliffs, of white calms and grim pulls home 
against wind and chop, of catches and failures, of 
journeys over the rocks in search of flotsam and 
jetsam, of the slopes he used to climb, what they 
were like in that distant boyhood of his, which one 
cannot imagine because he has grown so to fit the 
longshore that it seems he must always have been 
as he is. Through his voice, that rode so easily on 
the sound of the surf, a spirit of the place seemed 
to be speaking, and doubtless was. 'Aye !' he 
said, 'You see thic hollow between second an' 
third roozing [cliff-fall]. I've a-climbed up there 
into the field above. Couldn't do it now. 'Tis 
gone. Clean gone ! An' some more o'it 's coming 
down soon. 'Twill all be down. . . . There's a 
fresh roozing. Do 'ee see? Slid out, like, down 
on to the beach. 'Tis bound to fall up 'bove, 
sooner or later. There ain't the rabbits there was, 
up over. They knows. . . . Must ha' been a gert 
landslip once, for to make they there plats up to 
Windgate. Many's the bag o' sand an' seaweed 
that I've a-carried up there on my back, an' digged 



iv GREEN POINT 199 

into the ground. Shan't do it no more. Pity 
they left off tilling it. Best place round here for 
growing early taties, it was. Ah ! 'tis too hard 
work for 'em nowadays. They've a-lef it for the 
rabbits. . . . Thic poor little rock, cocking his 
head up there for the gulls to sit on, he's going 
to topple over, come a few south-easters, some o' 
they there ol'-fashioned sort. I reckon I'll see the 
last o' he. ... Ah! ah! ah! I thought t'would, 
when they frostises was last winter — Green Point's 
going. Do 'ee see how 'tis fallen away down 
underneath? Do 'ee see thic crack up 'bove? 
An' when Green Point's gone, what's solid rock, 
'tis the beginning of "Good-bye Steep Head!" 
Thousands o' tons o't be waiting for to come down 
t'other side, a crack you could get down into. 
An' 'tis opening faster V faster. Steep Head '11 
all be down — all o'it — what's been a landmark to 
seafaring folk for centuries. I've a-gathered holly 
on it afore now. Steep Head holly it always was 
at Christmas time for them as know'd the way 
down to it. Fine holly ways it made for the 
boats, too. Grows sturdy there in the sun and 
damp, an' southerly gales toughens it. . . . 

'Now steer her in. I got some wood in under 
there — an' I'll hae thic fencing up 'bove on the 



200 ALONGSHORE w 

edge of the cliff one o' these fine days when it all 
falls into the sea. Pull your right hand oar — back 
left — easy — now for'ard. . . . That's it. Know 
where you be to? You're in one o' my private 
harbours — what the sea's made for me; an' so it 
will — do ort for 'ee, if you watches; — an' you 
wants it, I can tell 'ee, up an' down here by your- 
self. Can always land on these here rocks, in here, 
this time o' tide, 'cepting when the wind's south- 
an'-west, an' then you must please to go farther 
on. Now then!' 

Benjie skipped out of the boat as if he had been 
going, not to pick up bits of wood, but to catch 
fish that required smart handling. 

A swell, scattering itself upon the rocks in 
white foam and spray, had taken charge of the 
boat and had tilted rather than driven us into a 
quiet rock-pool, where the water, thick with sea- 
weed, simply rose and fell as the seas outside 
forced their way in between the boulders around. 
Benjie's directions were: 'You row down to 
Refuge Cove while I goes along an' gathers up 
what's there. An' you'd better get out o' this 
quick unless you wants to be stuck here till the 
tide flows. It's still got a bit to fall. That's the 
only bad thing about my harbours — they'm very 



REFUGE COVE 20 1 

tidal. They bladderheads, what brings a jar to 
sea, bain't smart 'nuff for to use 'em.' 

With a scrape on the rocks, I pulled and 
pushed the boat out, not any too soon; and 
while I rowed on down to Refuge Cove, Benjie 
hopped along under cliff, pouncing on jetsam like 
a hungry bird, at times hardly distinguishable 
upon the shore he has grown so to resemble. 
Gulls flew round about him and circled over the 
weather-beaten rocks from which the land has 
fallen away, not uttering their angry or frightened 
cries — they know Benjie too well — but mewing as 
they will also do, over the sea when shoals of fish 
are about, and over land when a storm is brewing. 

At Refuge Cove we beached and hauled the 
boat up. Benjie flung his bag over his shoulder. 
'Now for it!' said he. 'Lord Runkum an't 
forgot Refuge Cove an' Benjie, that I can see. My 
senses, what a shackle must ha' been here! 'Tis 
an ill wind that don't blow me no good somehow.' 

The farther west one goes in our bay, the 
quicker and higher an easterly sea rises; hence, 
possibly, the almost superstitious dread that exists 
of going west when the wind is, or is likely to be, 
east; for in addition to finding oneself to lee- 
ward, the worst seas have to be encountered 



202 ALONGSHORE w 

farthest from home. The south-easterly gale 
must have hurled itself furiously into Refuge 
Cove, though it lies well back between headlands 
of rock at either end. An overpowering smell 
arose from the high-water cop, which was nastily 
soft and springy underfoot because so much rotten 
seaweed was buried in it among its blackened 
pebbles. All the beach, particularly where it 
stank most, was strewn with flotsam and jetsam; 
with boxes and scraps of plank, tins, bolts, and 
twisted timbers, from ships; sticks stripped of 
their bark, bushes and tree-roots, from the river; 
corks, cordage and battered lobster-pots, from 
fishermen's lost gear; worm-eaten balks from the 
depths of the sea. One's stomach turned a little 
at the sight; it was as if the sea had disgorged. 
We had lighted on one of its charnel-houses. 
The wash of the surf was black, foul, and scummy 
with decay. There seemed to be something 
ghoulish about Benjie too, as he picked his way 
along, throwing above high-water mark everything 
that could possibly be of value to him. Behind 
Dog's Tooth Point the sun dipped. A chill 
shadow overspread the Cove. 

Benjie shouted, holding aloft what turned out 
to be a yellowed and water-worn tallow dip. 



iv WRECKAGE 203 

'Poor fellows! Poor fellows, where this come'd 
from. Shipwrack, that's what that is, unless some 
fool throwed 'em overboard. Here's another. 
Lookse ! An' another too.' Fourteen or fifteen 
of them he picked up and put carefully in his 
pocket; for he still reads in the old-fashioned 
way, the book, like a folio, spread flat on the table 
in front of him, and by his side a candle which he 
snuffs between forefinger and thumb each time 
his long-sighted eyes begin to smart. 

Shortly afterwards he fell a-cussing. One o' 
they there — and so forth — had taken some wood 
of his from a hole up in the cliff, to which he had 
only been able to climb with difficulty. By long- 
shore custom anything below high-water mark 
belongs to the man who finds it, but what is above 
and in the cliff should be left for whoever placed 
it there. (Wreckage of any value, marked, in 
which government and various other people claim 
a share, belongs, wherever it is, to the man who 
can show his mark upon it.) 'Wouldn't I like 
to catch they thieves at it!' exclaims Benjie with 
the short-lived fury of a squall. But he never 
does. He never lies in wait. He has, I think, 
too great a contempt for those who gather his 
leavings, and feels so certain that in the long run 



2o 4 ALONGSHORE w 

he can outwit them, with stinging words at all 
events. 

Returning to the boat with our splintered 
loads, we laid them in tenderly and evenly, as if 
they had been merchandise. Benjie stripped off his 
jumper and jersey; took up his two-handled chop- 
per. The great business of the day was to begin. 

Hidden behind a big rock were three sodden 
pit-props of undressed pine-trunk — deck-cargo 
washed overboard from some Baltic tramp steamer. 
In the sweat of our brows we laboured, stripping 
off the wet bark to lighten those pit-props. Then, 
shouldering them, we staggered and slithered down 
the beach to the unfortunate little boat. 

She was out of trim; deep and lop-sided in the 
water. 'Us got 'bout enough, / think/ observed 
Benjie. 'Good job 'tis calm. I'll just go ashore 
again under Steep Head and get what I got there. 
Mustn't leave it behind these low tides, else some- 
body '11 hae thic too.' 

Ashore he went, with a saw, to collect and 
shorten for the boat his bits of timber. There 
was no little harbour handy at that time of tide. 
He therefore laid his burden on a flattish shelving 
rock; then stood over it, waiting, like a cor- 
morant. 



iv BUSTING OFF 205 

In very gingerly fashion I backed the boat 
ashore. A swell carried it right up to him. He 
began sliding the wood aboard over the stern. 
But the sea receded, leaving the boat high and dry 
on the ledge. Succeeding waves were not big 
enough to float her off. Instead, they rocked her 
on her keel, as if she herself had been a piece of 
wreckage. The wood slid from one side to the 
other. The heavy pit-props began rolling about: 
one could hear the boat crack under them. I was 
rolling too, and nearly broke an oar; did break a 
thole-pin. Wave after wave fell short; they only 
hit the boat, without lifting her. The rough rock 
was grinding into her timbers underneath. To 
hear it, to feel it. . . . One feels for a boat 
at such times as if it were a living thing. 
Benjie's leisurely sliding in of his rubbishy wood 
seemed deliberate cruelty to the unhappy little 
craft. I 'busted off'; and with all the long- 
shore language at my command, I swore hard at 
him. 

And then, of course, after we were once more 
afloat, I was ashamed. For Benjie is venerable 
and to be respected, above all in a boat. 

He, however, was not in the least put out. 
He treated my forcibleness as merely another 



2o6 ALONGSHORE w 

common object of the seashore. 'Ah !' he said 
with a smile of doubtful import, 'does make a 
fellow say what he wouldn't when he runs his 
craft aground. Lord, what I have a-heard 'em 
say! They ought to have been aground on a 
dark night, like I have, when you don't know 
which way to shove nor which side to jump out. 
My senses! how they'd ha' chackled. An' they 
wouldn't ha' know'd where they was to, nuther, 
which I always did, there or thereabout. 

'If us had a-had time an' if the tide had failed 
a little lower, I'd ha' gone down farther west an' 
see'd w'er any more copper bolts is rotted out o' 
the timbers o' thic ol' ship what was wrecked in 
'63. I'll hae some more o'em one o' these fine 
days when 'tis dead low water an' long spring 
tides, an' everything's fitty. They'm there! I'll 
hae 'em!' 

By a curious compensatory process, the oftener 
a thing unseen is talked about, the more it becomes 
to one a sort of myth, a fairy tale. And the 
greater the faith of the few, the more it seems an 
illusion to the many. By the force of their faith, 
indeed, they remove themselves from the every- 
day world, in which a thing either is, or is not. 
They speak out of a world in which 'everything 



iv A PROMISED LAND 207 

possible to be believed is an image of truth/ 
Nobody doubts the copper bolts are there, down 
west, among the boulders and weed-grown rocks, 
in the rotting hull of an old ship. Benjie has said 
so times without number. Years and years ago 
he fished up one or two of them in a skim-net, 
and scraped them till he came to the soft shining 
copper. But we do doubt if we shall ever see any 
of them. It is doubtful if even Benjie will ever 
see them any more. He has talked them from a 
fact into a tradition. Long enough he has been 
meaning to go again, and has not gone. The 
tides didn't suit; the day, wind, boat, mate, 
gear — something wasn't fitty. 'Let 'em bide. 
They won't shift. Someday us'll hae 'em.' 
The old wreck is a memory and a hope to him — a 
longshoreman's Promised Land. 'Copper bolts ! 
They there copper bolts !' The words themselves 
have acquired a magical sound. They brighten 
Benjie's eyes. To us who have heard about them 
so often, the copper bolts are a fairy tale. They 
belong to fairyland. They are a reality which 
has slid back into the past. 

Nevertheless, it is a fairyland in which Benjie 
lives. While we rowed homeward, the sun 
finished setting behind the westernmost cliffs. A 



208 ALONGSHORE xv 

very silent darkness began to take possession of 
Western Bay. But out to sea, where the sun's 
rays still reached, or were reflected from the thin 
evening clouds, the water was of a delicate pink 
and blue, most ethereal, most fairylike — the 
ghost of colour rather than colour itself. While 
Benjie sat in the boat bare-armed, with only his 
flannel on (little he minds the cold), talking of 
his copper bolts and again of the old times, I had 
a laughable notion that he was some grotesque old 
fairy that had floated in from the offing to tell 
of what was in a place that didn't exist. Not 
that he wasn't the same old Benjie, tattered and 
patched, hard and weather-beaten. But memory 
has a way, sometimes, of shining through old men's 
faces; of making them a lamp by means of which 
the past throws a glamour over the present. It so 
shone through Benjie's face then. Is it not the 
kindliest joke time plays on old men, to make 
reality flow backwards ? 

Beaching the boat was like waking up. She 
was overheavy. Her cut-rope parted as soon 
as the capstan hauled it taut. There was a 
deal more cussing and not a little chaff. To 
lighten her, Benjie carried his wreckage up the 
beach and flung it down. And there he left it. 



iv HISTORY IN WOOD 209 

Others helped themselves during the night; 
several whom he met, he sent to do so. The 
sport of it, for him, was over. The sea will send 
him plenty more. What remained, two or three 
days afterwards, he carried up to his house and 
placed with the wood that has been there, some of 
it, for fifty or sixty years. 

That stack of wood, over which the cats 
disport themselves, is the record of Benjie's life- 
time alongshore, and also warmth laid up for his 
old age. Each piece he burns will yield him up 
its history and his own. He loves it, and he 
will not turn it out, even to make room for 
nets. 



20. BEAUTIFUL 0NI0NHEAD 

Every one on the beach, every man who works 
hard when the sea allows, is pretty well of the 
same opinion. 'Old Onionhead — Beautiful 
Onionhead as they calls 'en — he's another o' they 
sort, an' thee casn't alter 'em. Sometimes he'll 
come down an' lend a hand, an' take what you 
gives 'en; an' sometimes he'll stand on the wall 
an' watch thee in the tub o' the sea — aye ! watch 
thee knock ashore broadside wi'out lifting a finger 
to help 'ee. He don't care. He've a-let hisself 
go. Don' know w'er he's any use to hisself; he 
ain't much use to anybody else, 'cept when he's 
minded, an' then thee cousn't wish for a better. 
He's always on his hoppers; one o' they sort that's 
happy on a shilling, only he don't never show 
when he's happy, if ever he is. Yet I've a-see'd 
'en throw a couple o' coppers into the sea 'cause 
he thought 'twasn't enough for what he'd a-done. 

210 



MYSTERY 211 

Funny chap; but he's amusing when you gets 
'en into conversation. Nobody knows where he 
come'd from; nobody knows what he's here for — 
not to do hisself any good, that's a sure thing; — 
an' I be blow'd if anybody knows how he'll manage 
when his time comes to pack up. He's a ****** 
mystery, Beautiful Onionhead is!' 

A mystery, where most men are acquainted 
with each other's lives from babyhood, his tall, 
limp figure slouches about amongst us, his comings 
and goings hardly an object of curiosity. When he 
cannot raise the price of a bed at the common 
lodging-house, he takes his rest standing against 
a lee wall with his hands in his pockets and his 
shoulders bent round forward, waiting — waiting, 
it seems, for nothing at all, not even for the hours 
to pass. His clothes have the additional soaked 
seediness of sleeping rough. His chin remains 
always in that state when it neither has, nor has 
not, a beard. The eyes of men like him, who 
snatch a living when and where they can, have 
often the fixed wildish look that one sees in 
predatory animals. Beautiful Oinionhead's eyes 
have it; all the more because an insufficiency of 
food, as it will do, has made the rims of them red. 
Being a man who keeps himself to himself, and 



212 ALONGSHORE iv 

does as he is minded, whether to his own dis- 
advantage or not, he has earned a certain amount 
of respect. Certainly he is chaffed: 'Hullo, you! 
How do 'ee seem? Can 'ee keep yourself warm? 
Be 'ee empty inside, like? Wouldn' 'ee like a 
couple o' roast ducks sot down before 'ee? Could 
make short work o' they, cousn' ? Just as an 
appetizer for more, like. . . .' But he is seldom 
asked in seriousness what has brought him to 
where he is, or how he succeeds in keeping himself 
alive from day to day. And then, if he does not 
with a stare turn upon his heel and walk off, he 
may reply in the well-worn words, 'Aye! when 
you'm down, what they does is to keep 'ee down.' 
That is all; it is less a complaint than the state- 
ment of a fact; and nobody laughs it out of court 
as a lazy man's excuse because everybody on the 
beach knows that so far as it goes it is quite true. 
Down is down. Beautiful Onionhead represents 
each man's downward possibility standing before 
him in the flesh. His fantastic nicknames do not 
now raise a smile, except when, during slack times, 
fishermen are chattering together on the sea-wall, 
and are turning round, as it were, to look at them- 
selves. 'Bee-utiful Onionhead — Lord, what a 
name! Do 'ee know what his proper name is? 



iv ONIONHEAD'S CHILDREN 213 

Blest if I do! T'other suits 'en better I 
s'pose. . . .' 

Children take to him: it was a child that 
dragged from him the only bit of his history we 
know. She had run up to him, and perhaps 
because she had not grown old enough to be steady 
on her legs, perhaps because Onionhead's clothes 
are dirty, her father called her back as children 
are called back from big dogs. Beautiful Onion- 
head took her up and carried her to her father. 
'Do 'ee think / an't had no chil'ern o' me own?' 
he burst out. 

'Hast? — What! be 'em dead then?' 

'No — they bain't dead — not that I knows of.' 

'Don' 'ee never see 'em then?' 

Beautiful Onionhead did not reply. 

Apart from that, almost the whole of his known 
history is contained in his two nicknames. 

One summer he was asked by a busy fisherman 
to take a party of visitors to sea. They were, it 
seems, the sort of people who continually go into 
loud raptures over the beauty of the cliffs and 
water and sky. 'Beautiful! Beautiful!' they 
would exclaim. 'Oh, isn't it beautiful! Don't 
you find it beautiful to live here, boatman?' For 
some reason — possibly because he, too, could 



214 ALONGSHORE vr 

appreciate the beautiful — they took to Onionhead, 
and, though he wetted them to the skin bringing 
the boat ashore, they would go to sea with no one 
else. 'Thic chap's fright,' they were called. He 
caught their catchword from them. 'Beautiful!' 
he would say, at first in fun or mockery, after- 
wards out of habit. And Beautiful he came to be 
called, at first also in fun, but afterwards because 
the name was so appropriately inappropriate. 

His fright, that would go to sea only with him, 
gave him a certain amount of reputation. 'Must 
be something in the chap, thee's know, for they 
sort o' people to stick to 'en like that.' Had he 
spruced himself up he might have been given 
employment in the busy seasons. He did look 
after himself till his fright went away. Then he 
returned to his old ways; he got drunk, fought a 
man (he was in the right), was turned away from 
his lodging, and slept out. One fright refused to 
go in a boat with him a second time. They said 
in a stage-whisper that he wasn't nice — 'Not at 
all nice for ladies.' Benjie, who felt for Beautiful 
under such an insult, whether merited or not, 
offered to take him winkle-picking. They rowed 
down westward, Benjie going easy with his oar in 
order not to pull the boat around against Onion- 



iv SHARING THE WORK 215 

head's feebler stroke. Near the rocks among 
which periwinkles are most abundant they hauled 
up and left the boat. Taking a bowl and a ballast- 
bag each, they clambered to the place. Benjie 
pointed out the winkles. 'There, if you looks 
under the stones in thic pool, you'll find 'em sure 
'nuff. Lovely gert gobbets they be. They'm 
there!' He himself moved off a little way, 
splashed into the water, bent down nearly double, 
raised the fringes of weed, dredged with his hands, 
straddled the smaller pools, and lifted carefully the 
flat, heavy stones under which winkles take shelter 
at low tide. Soon they were clattering into his 
bowl, which, when it was heaped full, he emptied 
into his ballast-bag. Then at it again; without 
any interval to ease his strong old back and knees. 
'How be getting on?' he asked after he had 
gathered three or four quarts. 'You'll hae to 
hurry up if you'm going to catch me, looks so.' 

Beautiful was admiring the scenery. 'I tell 'ee 
what/ he said. 'You pick the winkles into the 
bowl, an' I'll empty 'em into the bags.' 

Benjie was so struck by Onionhead's division 
of the labour that he forgot to 'tell him off' at the 
moment. But he told the tale along the beach. 
'What for the Lord's sake did 'er think? I was 



216 ALONGSHORE w 

to pick the gobbets an' he was to empty 'em into 
the bag. . . . Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful! Blest 
if thic there wouldn' be beautiful! But there! 
what can 'ee 'spect from the likes o' they sort, 
what an't got no heart for to do ort?' 

And in consequence nothing further was 
expected from Beautiful, even as a stop-gap. 

A French onion-man gave him his second 
nickname. He sold Beautiful a couple of strings 
of onions and agreed to wait for the money until 
he returned in the evening from some villages 
back on land. Beautiful, of course, sold the 
onions again, and with the money went to the 
'Beacon Light' for a pint of beer. There he 
stayed, and excited much wonder by calling for 
drinks round. The Frenchman returned; in- 
quired after Beautiful; was told about the onions. 
Very wrathful, he followed to the 'Beacon Light,' 
asked Beautiful for his money, wanted to fight 
it out of him. But that couldn't be allowed — 
not from a Frenchman. While they held him 
back, he jerked out his grievance amid roars of 
laughter, and flung at Beautiful all the English 
he had learnt while hawking round his strings 
of onions. 'You ****** ****** Anglishman!' 
he jabbered. 'You buy an' you tell me faithful 



THE FRENCHIE 217 

zat you vill pay, an' you sell ze ognons — an' you 
drink ! You Anglish ! You pig ! You fathead ! 
You have ze head like an ognon! I vould push 
my knife into you. . . .' 

The onion-man was chucked out; for, after 
all, Beautiful was an Englishman and the other 
only a foreigner. But the joke went round. 
'Thic ****** Frenchie said ol' Beautiful had a 
head like an onion. Blow'd if he an't, too!' 
The kids got hold of it; the kids he liked in 
his odd way. When they passed him in' the 
street they said as if to one another: 'Onions! 
Onionhead!' They did not, however, dare to 
shout out after him; he never came down quite 
to that; and after a time they forgot, or baited 
some one else; while the name of Onionhead, no 
longer with any sting in it, was added to his other 
name of Beautiful. 

For a time he hawked fish, selling them first 
and paying afterwards out of his sales, until he 
was found out to be a herring-hawk. That is 
to say, when the boats were coming in at night 
he would help or pretend to help haul one of 
them up, would take the half-dozen herrings that 
were thrown out to him for his breakfast, run 
and stow them away, go on to the next boat, 



218 ALONGSHORE w 

and do the same right across the beach. Then 
by selling all his herrings for a few coppers he 
would gain enough for a pint or two, and queer 
the fishermen's own retail market. The upshot 
was that everybody refused to let him have fish 
they could sell elsewhere, though he still was given 
his so-called breakfast for lending a hand, because 
help when a boat is coming ashore should never be 
refused, lest one rough day it be needed very badly. 
His existence thenceforward — unemployed, un- 
trusted, unhelped — became the puzzle it is; yet 
he did not seem to live a life of misery. One 
sunny spring morning — the first in the year when 
the air was soft and the sea really sparkled — I 
found him lying on the beach, like a piece of old 
rain-soaked sacking with human limbs protruding 
from it, and passed the time of day with him. 
He looked up luxuriously. 'Beautiful morning, 
isn't it? Beautiful, very beautiful!' I am sure 
he meant it, and have wondered ever since how 
he could find it in him to do so. On another 
occasion I saw him putting up decorations, holly 
berries, and cotton-wool snowflakes in a public 
bar as merrily as if he had a home and Christmas 
of his own. He did it well, too, and tastefully; 
and shouted cheerily with a jolly oath or two. 



iv BROTHER PARASITES 219 

It was his presence there among the outward signs 
of Christmas that shocked one on his behalf. 

The police got wind of how he slept. They 
moved him on from an upturned boat. They 
turned him out of two linhays in the allotments. 
They procured him seven days for sleeping under 
the leaky roof of the bark-house upon the sodden 
nets that are left there in heaps. Again, he was 
tracked to a cave under the cliffs. That meant 
fourteen days hard. Beautiful Onionhead became 
a public character, an incorrigible, a subject of 
argument. The town, which is parasitical — on 
gentry, visitors, and fishermen — and hates its 
brother parasites in a lower class of life, would 
have had him put away for fourteen months or 
years. The beach, robuster, more happy-go-lucky, 
and tenderer to those who prey upon it, wanted to 
know: Why the hell couldn' 'em let the poor ol' 
chap bide in his cave ? He wasn't doing no harm 
to nobody. Snug enough he was, an' he couldn't 
hurt nothing 'cause there wasn't nort there for 
to hurt. If 't had been a gen'leman wi' money 
in his pocket an' a bed at home, they'd ha' let 
'en bide so long as he was minded to. 'Cause 
'tis an old man that an't got no money for a 
bed an' don' know where to get it, they goes 



220 ALONGSHORE iv 

an' shoves 'en in chokey. Wonder how they'd 
feel, what put 'en there, if they was situated like 
it. They'd be glad 'miff for to crawl away into a 
warm cave.' The police, on the other hand, spoke 
of other kinds of parasites, of having to disinfect 
the cells after Beautiful Onionhead, of visitors 
objecting to him on the seats and in the shelters. 
Some people went so far as to declare that it was 
a kindness to old Onionhead to clap him in jail. 
'Suppose he was to be taken ill and die, sleeping 
out like that. . . .' 

Perhaps Beautiful Onionhead was prepared to 
take that risk. When he came back to the 
beach, washed and clipped, he said merely with an 
immense contempt, 'Let 'em chatter. 'Tisn't so 
bad, just for a change like.' 

Jim summed up the situation. 'Aye!' he 
said. 'That there's the way o'it. I s'pose us be 
getting more civilized. But this here civilization, 
thee's know, is terrible cruel towards them as 
bain't minded to fall in wi' it, or can't; an' it 
don't follow they'm any worse'n the rest o'em 
after the rate.' 

Therefore Beautiful Onionhead's present sleep- 
ing-place will not be given away, though several 
of us know it. Snug, ingenious, and safe, it will 



iv A SNUG DOSS 221 

take a long time to find. Its only disadvantage 
is, that when he cannot get there unobserved 
he has to wander about all night, and then, 
maybe, he hardly finds the wet cold darkness 
beautiful. 



2i. A DROWNDED CORPSE 

Benjie had talked of going westward that day, 
after a peck or two of winkles. 

The weather was joyful, a song played in colour 
by the sunshine upon the bright shifting sea, a 
dance of light water. East and west the cliffs 
stood out like ramparts. Alongshore there was 
just enough lop to fill the air with a fresh-sounding 
murmur, and to cool it. 

'Bain't 'ee going to shove the boat down, 
Benjie?' 

He did not say No. Across beach, where the 
sea puts an end to the best laid of plans, and day 
and night springs work upon men without warn- 
ing, a definite No is almost as rare as an un- 
conditional Yes. "Tisn't fit, is it?' and 'Aye, 
if 'tis fitty,' are beach decisions. 

Benjie did not go so far as to say even that. 
He stood scanning the in-shore water as if a shoal 

222 



iv BENJIE'S SEARCH 223 

of sprat or mackerel had been sighted by means of 
the deep blue shadow or the oily patch that they 
make when the sea is clear and fairly calm. 'Poor 
young feller!' he said. 'I been down 'long to 
Steep Head, an' / can't see nort o'en. There was 
his clothes, right 'miff, lying on the beach under the 
height o' the hill, an' he wasn't inside o'em, an' 
hadn't been for some time, looked so. Had those 
'laskit things for to hold up his socks. Why 
can't 'em wear stockings, same as I always done, 
if they can't hold up their socks wi'out they things? 
Ah ! 'twas stockings they there ol' women, what's 
gone, used to knit. Poor young feller! He 
won't do nort no more. He's finished. He 
must ha' giv'd out suddent, like, when he was 
swimming, or been took wi' the cramp p'raps, or 
else one o' they stinging fish got at 'en, an' the 
more he struggled the farther the water carried 
'en out, like it always do whichever way the 
wind an' tide is, when you only struggles an' 
don't swim. Well, / can't do no more, not till the 
flood tide makes, unless the wind goes up easterly.' 
Therefore Benjie talked. First one, then 
another, came up to question him, and stayed to 
stand on the sea-wall gazing out to sea; their 
conversation very subdued, except when they got 



124 ALONGSHORE iv 

into an argument upon the probable course of 
the body in the sea; for a corpse known to be 
driving alongshore is rather like a reputed ghost 
in a neighbourhood; it does not so much frighten 
men as make them conscious that everyday life is 
not everything. 

'So thee's found his clothes, Benjie. . . . 
How's come to go down there then?' 

'Why, they sent an' asked me to go down an' 
look, didn' 'em? They know'd where he was 
gone to an' they know'd he wasn't come back.' 

'Asked you, I s'pose, 'cause you've a-found 
drownded people before an' brought 'em back. 
That's a thing I an't never done, an' I don' know 
as I should like to nuther.' 

'Benjie has the luck. They gives he fust 
chance o' earning the Board o' Trade five 
shillings. . . .' 

'Hell about your five shillings! I'd sooner 
gie they five than that anybody should be 
drownded. If thee casn't do thee best for the 
dead wi'out five shillings, 'tis a poor look-out, 
I say. Where there's any one drownded there's 
sorrow, an' so it continues till they'm found an' 
put underneath decent an' done with. I an't 
always had the five bob. . . .' 



iv THE SEA'S TOLL 225 

'Somebody's had it then.' 

'That's very likely wi' the sort there is about; 
an' I don't begrudge it to 'em if they'm wicked 
enough for to do it. Let 'em hae it. 'Twill 
find 'em out some day, sure 'nuff. 'Tis a thing 
us be always liable to, ain't it, what picks up a 
living alongshore, for to stumble across a drownded 
corpse lying on the beach or to see 'en washing 
about in the tub o' the surf — an' when you least 
expects it too. You never knows. They talks 
about Davy Jones's locker, an' the sea taking its 
toll o' bodies — so't do — an' it gives 'em back to 
the likes o' us; or some o'em anyhow. "Ah!" 
I've a-said to meself 'fore now, when I've a-stood 
an' looked down on one o'em, "You was alive, 
an' now you'm dead, an' there's all the difference." 
Which is one o' they things nobody can't deny, 
nor don't want to that I knows of; only it brings 
it home to 'ee, like, such times. Drownded 
people is so cold an' slippery, an' terrible difficult 
to handle, specially in the dark.' 

'Wer's reckon this chap '11 turn up then, 
Benjie?' 

'All depends. If 'er don't get buried over in the 
sand, or don't get jammed an' fixed, washing across 
Broken Rocks, or get carried out to sea, he might 

Q 



226 ALONGSHORE * 

be up 'long here next tide. Maybe they'll shoot 
seine herefrom an' get 'en thic way. I hopes they 
will. When anybody's been in the water many 
days an' got knocked about an' bitten, 'tis almost 
so well for their folks never to set eyes on 'em 
no more. Bad they be to look at when they'm 
like that. Poor things, I pities 'em, what's 
waiting for to hear news o'en. Who wouldn't 
hae a feeling for 'em? 'Tisn't no good news 
they got coming, however 'tis.' 

So the talk went on among the changing 
groups that stood along the sea-wall. Visitors, 
scenting diversion in the air, stopped to ask 
questions, then stare at the sea, ask more questions, 
and shudder. Bathers were few; for who 
could be sure he would not knock against 
the body in the water? Regular fishing came 
almost to a standstill: who knew when the body 
might be sighted, or where cast up? There was 
nothing to be done; unrest took the place of 
action. It was as if the corpse had taken over 
command of the beach, and had put into all hands 
not good heart but a dead suspense. 

On the flood-tide the seine-net was shot. 
Long hauls were made, so that the net circled 
well out and scraped over all the sandy bottom 



iv SEINE-HAULING 227 

at the foot of the beach. Small crowds watched; 
no one could tell, while the ropes were being 
hauled ashore, what was underneath the semicircle 
of bobbing corks, what was rolling over the sand 
in the bunt of the net. And when, at the end 
oT each haul, the bunt was coming in, with its 
rotund mass of seaweed inside it, though some 
rushed down to look, the most part remained on 
the wall, inquiring, 'Have they got it? Have 
they got it?' 

What they did get was a few fish that no one 
hastened to buy. 

Next day the seining continued, and the next. 
It was at least something to do. Then men began 
to ask: 'An't none o' his folk been out eet? 
They chaps what's been seining have a-losted three 
days' work for nort. 'Tisn't that they wants to 
be paid; us knows that; they'd be so glad as 
anybody else if they could find 'en. But I reckon 
somebody ought to thank 'em an' make some 
acknowledgement, like, to 'em for what they've 
a-done. 'Tisn't giving o'em no encouragement.' 

And meanwhile, without doubt, the relatives 
sat in house, trying in vain to give each other 
some encouragement; thinking there was no 
sorrow like theirs, and how kind people were; 



228 ALONGSHORE iv 

thanking them most by placing all dependence 
upon them. 

It was the beginning of a change in feeling: 
the body was becoming, as it were, the sea's; a 
public property, an institution; nobody's and 
everybody's. Perhaps, now, it would never be seen 
at all. Grim realistic jokes began to be made about 
it; yet when a man was taxed with keeping quiet, 
as likely as not he would reply: 'I was just think- 
ing to meself about thic there chap. It don't let 
a fellow rest, like, him riding about out there. 
'Tis a wonder summut an't been see'd o'en. 'Tisn't 
as if us had a-had a breeze for to drive 'en out to 
sea. The crabs must ha' got he in among the 
rocks.' 

'Ah ! you won't see nort o' he now, not till 'er 
rises in the water after the seventh day. Men, 
they says, rises face downwards — don' 'em? — an' 
women face upwards. You'll see he when his 
time comes.' 

A suggestion was made that if the Brixham- 
men were allowed to trawl in the bay. . . . 

'They wouldn' bring 'en in, don't you make no 
mistake about that. Certainly they catches dead 
bodies in their trawls, an' a horrible state they'm 
in, too, sometimes; but they don't take 'em into 



iv BRIXHAM-MEN 229 

port. Not they ! If they took 'em aboard they'd 
hae to pay for their burying. Lord! 'tis nothing 
in Brixham for one o' they there trawlers to come 
in short o' a hand or two, drownded; an' some- 
times the relations offers a reward; but all the same 
they don't take the body aboard, in case the reward 
shouldn't be paid, an' then they'd hae to bury 'en 
at their own expense. 'Sides, they wouldn't sell 
none o' their fish if 'twas know'd they'd had a dead 
body in the catch. They Brixham-men, they just 
puts bodies back where they come'd from. An' 
I reckon 'tis better so, all ways, to let 'em bide, 
an' rest where they be to. As for thic fellow 
there, I been down under cliff, an' up east too, an' 
/ can't see nort o'en. Buried up in the sand, I 
'spect. 

On the eighth day, however, a boat coming 
ashore from fishing reported that the body had 
been seen floating about under water not far from 
the place of drowning. It might have been one 
of the yellow porpoises that were known to be in 
the bay. It could not, they declared, have been 
a jelly-fish. It was the wrong shape. 

Tides were long. Bathing had begun again. 
Next morning the bay on the far side of Broken 
Rocks was merry with people swimming and 



2 3 o ALONGSHORE *v 

splashing and lying in the sunshine; was beautiful 
with the sight of live human bodies against the 
blueness of the sea. There the corpse was, or 
among Broken Rocks: it could not have travelled 
far. At low tide, when the rocks were much 
uncovered and the water was shallow on the sand 
for a long distance out, some of us went down 
among the bathers, and, half swimming, half 
walking, we trod the sand to try if by any chance 
we could find the body with our feet. Others, 
when we returned without success, were flocking 
to Broken Rocks as if the price of mussels had 
suddenly risen to ten shillings a peck. One man 
came across the sandy pools carrying a varnished 
boat-hook. What's got thic thing for?' we 
called out. 

He stopped suddenly and looked at it with 
comic surprise. 'I don't know,' he said. 'Felt 
I wanted summut in me hand, I s'pose.' 

Before we had finished smiling, there followed 
an old white-bearded man, and he carried in his 
hand a rusty dented bucket. 

A bucket for a corpse. . . . We burst out 
into laughter. The spell of the dead body was 
broken for us, and as the tale of the boat-hook and 
the bucket travelled across beach, it was still further 








«3r 



iv CHUCKED UP 231 

broken. Laughter broke it; the laughter which, 
by dissolving sorrow and death in life, prevents an 
awful accumulation of them in the mind of man. 

The search was given up. 'He've a-drifted 
out to sea, an' I reckon that's the best could 
happen.' 

But the very next day, in its own time, the sea 
just chucked him up at the feet of a woman who 
was sitting in the sunshine on the beach. 

It was not much damaged — only the fingers 
and toes. 



22. THE BARE-KNEED MATE 

Who? Thic there whipsey little chap scraping 
Bill Brimworthy's drifter? There isn't nort the 
matter wi' he, not that I knows of. He looks a 
sight better 'n he used to, anyhow. But he don't 
look like a fisherman that's been at it all his life — 
do he? — for all he wears a guernsey like the rest 
o'us, which youVe got to if you goes to sea much 
an' handles nets. Coat-buttons catches in every- 
thing. An' he ain't a proper fisherman, nuther, 
though he's a chap as goes fishing an' been on the 
beach this ten year or more. If ever anybody was 
mazed for to get to sea, he was; an' as 't turned 
out 'twas me give'd 'en his fust chance. The Bare- 
kneed Mate, us calls 'en, 'cause he jumped into the 
boat bare-kneed, on the hop, like, wi'out ort wi'en. 
'An't 'ee never spoke to 'en? He could spin 
'ee up a yarn if he was minded. 01' Bare-knees 
have a-see'd hard times, if anybody have. I reckon 

232 



iv A PARSON 233 

heVe a-heard his chil'ern more 'n once crying for 
summut to eat when there wasn't nort in the house, 
nor any chance o' getting ort unless you went over 
to Broken Rocks at low tide an' picked some 
mussels, an' borrowed a bit o' salt an' coal for to 
cook 'em with. That's been done. He wasn't 
never one o' they sort what talks about it outside 
or whiddles around district visitors an' the likes o' 
they, an' goes an' sings hymns for grocery tickets 
like some o'em do. I mind a parson coming down 
to beach one Sunday evening, an' started preaching 
about going to sea of a Sunday. 01' Bare-knees 
up an' told 'en quick: "Look here, sir, you has 
Sunday once a week, don' 'ee?" 

4 "Yes, my man," said the parson like they do 
talk, as if you didn't know nort about nothing. 
"Certainly." 

4 "Well, us have had Sunday every day for two 
months this winter, while it's been too rough for to 
go to sea or the fish wasn't there. They don't take 
no heed o' Sunday. An' now they be there', if they 
an't sheered off. If you, sir, '11 go to your church 
an' pray for the fish an' us to hae Sunday once a 
week, like you do, an' your prayer's answered, I 
be damn'd if I won't keep Sunday your way — an' 
wi'out your pay for the same." 



234 ALONGSHORE iv 

'Shuts his hooter, thic parson did. 

'That was after oP Bare-knees had been going 
to sea two or three seasons, an' bad seasons they 
mostly was, I mind; enough to take the heart out 
o' any man. Only, you see, if you been brought 
up to fishing you don't look to anything else to 
help 'ee out o'it, an' that makes 'ee follow it up. 
'Tis different when you got something to fall back 
on. 

'OF Bare-knees have, if he was like to do it. 
He's a carpenter by trade; a good workman, I've 
heard 'em say; an' used to earn good wages. 
Used to spend half o'em, I should say, on 
mackerel hooking in the summer, for all us let 
'en hae a boat cheap, him being one o' the likes 
o' ourselves. He could sail a boat all right long 
afore he come'd out to beach. Then, suddently, 
wi'out saying a word to anybody what he was 
about, he throw'd up his job an' walked out to 
beach, saying he was going to try that an' go to 
sea. Us laughed at 'en, not thinking he meant 
it; but there he was, an' there he stayed. No- 
body know'd why he'd a-lef his work. Some 
said he was clean mazed an' the next place he'd 
sail to would be the 'sylum, an' be took in a cab 
wi' a strong chap sitting each side o'en. An' 



iv < CAN'T' 235 

some o'em said 'twas a move o' his master's; 
how he was going to hae boats on the beach, 
up against us, an' had sent his foreman out to 
learn the job, like, for when he should hae 'em. 
I thought p'raps he'd had a word or two wi' his 
master — never wasn't the chap to stand much yap 
from anybody. I mind well enough he had a 
cough what seemed as if 'twas going to tear his 
inside out; shaked 'en, it did, like a southerly 
gale on my ol' front window. There he'd stay, 
an' cough. "Why doesn't get in house or go 
back to thy work in the warm?" I asked 'en 
one day when I see'd 'en standing 'bout out to 
beach. 

' "I can't," he says. 

'"Can't!" says I. "G'out! What do 'ee 
mean by can't? Take an' go back to thy job. 
There bain't nort for 'ee out here." 

* "An't 'ee got a job for a chap?" he says. 

' "I can't give 'ee a job," I told 'en. "An' if 
'tis going to sea you wants, I can't take 'ee 'long 
wi' me, not while I got Jack Ruccombe" — that's 
my wife's brother — "not while I got Jack Ruc- 
combe for mate. I don't want no other. 
'Twouldn't be fair on he." 

' "Then you'm fixed up?" says he. 



236 ALONGSHORE * 

* "Fixed up — aye !" I said. "How could us 
keep a roof over our heads if us wasn't fixed up." 

i "So be I fixed up," he says; an' with tr\e 
same he puts his hands over his ears — like so, 
as if it hurt 'en there — an' starts coughing. 

'Anyhow, 'er soon found out the difference 
'tween coming out to beach an' going out to 
sea. Us have a-see'd they strappers what jumps 
into a boat so long as there's ort to be earned, 
an' then when there isn't nort to be earned and 
summut wants doing, thee ca'st whistle for 'em 
like thee's whistle for the wind, an' sometimes 
'twill come an' sometimes 'twon't. Not that he 
didn't pick up a copper or two boat-hauling an' 
the like, an' a pint wi' anybody that went in to 
hae it; all hands was free an' open enough wi' 
him, knowing pretty well how he was situated; 
but they know'd too that he was only waiting 
his chance for to jump in a boat an' stick there 
— an' there 'twas. Couldn't expect nobody to 
turn out for he, an' 'twasn't no use making 'en 
think so when he ought to ha' been back at his 
work. 

'He had to pick up odd jobs what'd come 
to him on the beach, like carpet-beating an' 
moving luggage. An' then he began to let 



iv FLARES SIGHTED 237 

hisself go. They talks about men letting their- 
selves go, an 1 so they might; I tell 'ee it costis 
money not to let yourself go, an' oV Bare-knees 
hadn't got none. But I took partic'lar notice, 
if you asted 'en how he was, by way o' speaking, 
he'd answer, "Better, better"; an' sometimes he'd 
look 'ee in the face an' say, "Don' 'ee think so?" 

'One night when Jack Ruccombe an' me was 
keeping o'it up — us hadn't gone to sea thic night 
'cause our nets was over to the bark-house — 
Harry Drake, him what's a fisherman but don't 
never trouble hisself to do nort 'less he can pick it 
up quick an' easy, his wife being a nurse — Harry 
Drake an' oP Bare-knees comes an' fetches me an' 
Jack out o' the "Beacon Light." 

'"Lookse!" says Harry, pointing out to sea. 
"One o' the drifters have been burning flares. 
Can't be nort wrong wi' 'em, nice fine night like 
this here. They've a-got a load o' herrings an' 
wants help. Can't take in all their nets, that's what 
'tis. Thee's better go out to 'em. Come on !" 

"Twas Harry said that, but I reckon 'twas 
Bare-knees put 'en up to it. Fine chance for he. 
Harry wouldn' ha' troubled hisself. Too much 
rowing for he. 

'Well, us hauled the seine out o' the seine- 



23 8 ALONGSHORE w 

boat an' dragged her down over beach to the 
water, an' Jack gets in an' Harry Drake jumps 
in. I was just shoving an' jumping in too, when 
Bump! goes my head up against ol' Bare-knees. 
I see'd stars. 'Twas him jumping in same time. 
I hangs on to the boat. "'Tisn't no use four o'us 
going," I says. "'Tis only extra weight so's us 
can't take in so many herrings." Then I turns to 
Bare-knees: "If you'm going, I bain't." 

'There us stands, the two o'us, wi' the seas 
lopping in over the starn o' the boat. An' dark 
'twas too. 

' "Come on!" says Jack to me. "Devil! 'tis 
thy boat, 'en it?" 

'So I shoves, an' jumps in, leaving ol' Bare- 
knees standing on the beach. 

'An' he was still there when us come'd back. 
/ wouldn' ha' been, if anybody 'd a-treated me 
like us did him. Loaded wi' herrings, us was. 
They'd had to gie up two nets to us. Pretty 
sweat 'twas, rowing in. 

'Us hauled up, an' then Bare-knees says to me, 
sideways like: "Gie us a couple o' thy herrings, will 
'ee?" 

' "Why!" says I. "Wasn't I going to tell 'ee 
to pick up a dozen or two? What's the hurry?" 



w ' CAN'T ' AGAIN 239 

' "There ain't no hurry," he says. "Only I 
got the missis bad in house an' an't got nort for 
her. An' the kids be crying. ... I come'd away 
out o'it. I an't told no man. . . ." 

< "Look here," I says, like I did afore. "Why 
doesn't go back to thy work? 'Tisn't only 
thyself. . . ." 

'An' he says, "Can't!" again. 

' "What?" 

* "I dursen't," he says, "I an't never troubled 
no one wi' my private affairs. . . . The doctor told 
me as how I should be dead in two years if I 
didn't get outdoor work." 

'Well, thee 'astn't got it." 
'No, I an't." 

'An' it don't do," I tells 'en, "to listen too 
much to what they doctors says. They don' know 
always." 

'He poked his face up into mine — proper 
ghastly he looked there in the dark, sure 'nuff. 
"But I know'd 'twas true," he said. "I know'd 
it; felt it in meself. Thee ca'st feel things like 
that, thee's know." 

' "Why di'sn't tell anybody?" I says. "Then 
p'raps a fellow could ha' put summut in thy way, 
if he know'd how 'twas." 



< u 



2 4 o ALONGSHORE w 

' "Tell anybody !" he says. "What's the good ? 
Would anybody ha' give'd me a job to go to sea 
if they'd ha' know'd I wasn't proper up to it — a 
dying man as you might ha' said then. Would 
you?" 

' "Don' know as I should," which was true. 
You can't afford to risk your life to sea wi' a man 
what isn't up to it, though it has been done often 
enough 'fore now. 

' "'Sides," he says, "the doctor telled about 
sending me to one o' they hospital places where 
you goes an' dies away from everybody you got. 
I couldn't face thic." 

"They places bain't no good," I says. "'Tis 
better for to die comfor'able if you got to. But 
/ can't make way for 'ee, an' let my missus an' 
kids starve for to feed yours." 

1 "I knows it," he says. 

' "N'eet any other chap in his senses." 

' "I knows that too, now," he says. "Aye, 
don' I know it!" 

'An' with the same, he burstis out crying. 
Fair broke, he was, if ever a man was broke; 
broke like men be sometimes, an' no fault o' 
theirs nuther. 

* "Here," I says. "Take a dozen or two of 



iv BARE-KNEES' CHANCE 241 

herrings — sell some o'em if thee't minded — an' 
here's a shilling for thee to go on with. Thee's get 
thy chance," I told 'en, "if thee's wait." 

'He did too; an' from me. 

'It come'd on to blow next day, an' us didn't 
go to sea for a week; an' when it did stop 
blowing, it come'd in foggy. Jack an' me had 
our nets in the boat, an' was having an argument, 
like us do, w'er us should shove off or not — not 
but what we wasn't o' the same mind really, which 
was to stop ashore. 

'Bare-knees comes along while we was arguing 
of it out. "What's the use o'it?" Jack was 
saying. "You shoves the boat down an' hauls 
about your gear, taking out o'it more'n thee's 
earn, an' all the time thee doesn't know w'er the 
herrings be still in the bay or not." 

' "Us always got to find 'em, an't us?" I said. 

' "Aye !" says Jack. "An' thee ca'st find 'em in 
this here fog, an' not know after that where you've 
a-found 'em to, nor where to shoot your nets, an' 
very likely lose or tear abroad the whole fleet o'em 
wi' shooting too far in. How ca'st thee tell where 
thee a't in a fog." 

' "Well, I've a-see'd fogs lift afore now." 

' "An' us have a-see'd 'em get thicker, an't 

R 



242 ALONGSHORE w 

us? 'Tisn't as if us know'd the herrings was 
there after a gale like what us have a-had. They'm 
gone into deep water. There isn't no prospects, 
I tell 'ee." 

* "I've a-catched 'em times likes this," I 
says. 

' "Seems to me," says Bare-knees joining in, 
"that them as can go out don't want to go, an' 
them as wants to can't get the chance." 

' "Thee's better ****** we ll go then," says 
Jack. "I bain't going." 

Do 'ee mean it?" I says. 
'Mean it — aye !" says Jack, wi' his rag proper 
out. "Take 'en, if thee't minded. An' if thee's 
lose nets thee ca'st get he pay for 'em." 

'Which put my rag out too. "Come on!" 
I says to Bare-knees; an' down us shoved the 
drifter. "Don' 'ee want to go home an' fetch 
some things?" I asted 'en. "No," he says; an' 
in he jumps, just like he was, bare-kneed. If he'd 
ha' gone home for to fetch ort, very likely us 
wouldn't ha' gone, 'cause the fog come'd on 
thicker'n ever; couldn't see nort. An' I daresay, 
if the truth was told, he hadn't got nort to his 
name for to go an' fetch. Cheated the gulls out o' 
some bread an' stuff o' mine what had been in the 



( if 



iv A BERTH FOUND 243 

bow o' the boat a week, he did; an' kept hisself 
warm cleaning up the boat out to sea — out to sea, 
mind you. Us mostly leaves 'em dirty. 

'Us catched six or seven thousand thic night — 
off Steep Head us found us was when the fog 
lifted t'wards daylight; — an' next morning Jack, 
my mate, was so wild as a conger. "Pretty 
thing!" he says, "now you've a-took he out an' 
fell across the fish. What be I to do? Can't 
turn 'en out 'cause you've had a catch; 'twouldn't 
look fitty; an' now I an't got a boat 't all. Better 
'fit you'd stayed ashore." 

"Twould ha' been better; but as it happened 
we wasn't the only boat what had an argument 
over going out thic night. Bill Brimworthy an' 
his mate, what never wasn't much good to 'en, 
pretty nigh come'd to blows, an' separated; an' it 
come'd into my mind to say to 'en: "Here's a 
mate for thee, Bill. He'll clean up thy drifter for 
'ee. Did for me last night, out to sea." 

1 "That's what I wants," says Bill, being angry. 
"Not no more o' they ****** what only snores 
an' takes their share." An' he took 'en, an' he's 
had 'en 'long wi' 'en ever since; an' an't heaved 
the tiller at his head once, they says, for all Bill's 
one o' they sort would so soon heave the tiller at 



244 ALONGSHORE w 

your head as look. A man gets like it fishing, 
thunder-puffy like. . . . 

'Just you stroll over an' take a look inside 
Bill's boat what he's scraping. 'Tis like a new 
pin, oldish boat too, wi' everything in its place 
better'n a ship's cabin. The Bare-kneed Mate's 
tool-chest, I reckon 'tis. He is a carpenter by 
trade. 

'Funny thing, too, he turned religious after 
that. I've a-see'd men, afore, turn religious when 
they was in trouble, but not over coming 'out o' 
trouble. Must ha' been the strain an' the anxiety, 
an' then me finding o'en a job.' 



23 . NAVY CHAPS 

Most times there is a bluejacket on the Front, 
always a naval pensioner or two. This little town 
is Navy. It is no good begetting sons here and 
mapping out their future with too much certainty. 
They grow up till they begin to have secret minds 
of their own. Something comes over them. Off 
they go into the Navy, and one more family is 
stretching its eyes about the world. 

Politicians and newspapers talk about ships, the 
public reckons up its safety and its purse in terms 
of battleships, and the Admiralty humours them 
all for its own purposes. On occasion, chiefly 
during an election, we too talk battleships; and a 
pretty mess we make of it; for each man speaks 
of the Navy that he knew; the ships he knows, 
or did know years ago. But ordinarily, when we 
speak of the Navy, we mean men, not ships; the 
man behind the gun, as he calls himself in these 

245 



246 ALONGSHORE w 

days of gunnery. (He does not call himself what 
he equally is, the man before the gun — somebody 
else's gun.) Battleships are tracked from port to 
port in newspapers as often as not a day stale; 
but who cares about the battleships themselves? 

'The Bellaruffin [Belter option] was due in to 
Devonport this morning to pay off, so I see'd on 
the paper. . . . When's your Ted coming home 
on leave? Passed for leading seaman, an't he? 
When's 'er going to go through the gunnery 
school?' That's what we want to know. 'Do 
'ee mind thic time when us was pretty near bottled 
up, the lot o' us, an' oV Ted give'd thic Irish- 
man a thick lip?' That is what we do mind. 
Dreadnoughts. . . . 'Hell about Dreadnoughts! 
They'm going to do away wi' pensions to pay 
for they Dreadnoughts, bain't 'em — so they was 
telling out to beach yesterday.' Here are old 
men who served their time in sailing ships. They 
have seen something of life, and they don't think 
much of the modern ironclad, or its crew either. 
'There !' they will say, making some pretty old 
knot or intricate sennit. 'There, my boy ! There 
isn't one man in a hundred in the Navy now that 
can show you how to make that. In my time, I 
tell you. . . .' Dreadnoughts are nice new toys 



iv WHO PROVIDES WHAT 247 

for a nation to play with. The point for us is 
that battleships have brothers, sons, and friends, 
husbands and fathers, aboard them; that they are 
wet ships, happy ships, or proper sad. On merry 
evenings we sing: 

'They may build the ships, my boys, 

And think they know the game, 
But they can't build the boys of the bulldog breed 

That made Old England's name!' 

And we mean it, both then and at times when 
we should laugh at the blatancy of the song; for 
to us, they stands for more than foreign nations; 
it stands for our own Admiralty as well. They 
build the ships without which there could be no 
Navy. We provide the men, the living flesh and 
blood, without which their ships would be so 
much misshapen scrap-iron. Brains and material 
and money, all in plenty, go to the making of 
their ships. God knows how much more has gone 
to the making of those who man them! 

'They there Navy chaps. . . .' The phrase 
denotes a difference that really exists. They form 
within the nation another nation with its own 
traditions, customs, manner of growth, habits of 
thought, and its own internal politics, about which 
the outer world hears next to nothing until a brief 



248 ALONGSHORE w 

Admiralty notice or a new regulation ends each 
hot discussion. They seem to grow to their 
uniform so that they cannot wear civilian clothes 
well. Even a service dialect is superimposed on 
each man's native own, and so persistent a speech 
as that of Devon becomes clipped instead of 
lingered over. To go into the Navy is to leave 
home in more senses than one. It is to become 
in part a stranger in their own land, among their 
own people. 

For well-grown youths the service is a bank to 
which they can mortgage the best portion of their 
lives in return for the means of life — shelter and 
rations. It is a standby and a trap. It seduces 
them young, and returns them smarter than they 
were, but worse off than they might have been. 
For the hardships of the Navy are not the hard- 
ships of the longshore. It is difficult to make the 
change from one to the other; to turn from 
disciplined work aboard ship to the haphazard 
labour, the perseverance through ill-luck, of 
fishing. And the routine life of the Navy does 
not teach men to put by during good seasons 
against bad. They live as they go. When the 
fish fail they cannot say, 'Us have see'd it afore, 
an't us? An' will again. Just you hold on a 



iv JEALOUSY 249 

bit !' Naval pensioners, having what they wanted, 
what everybody wants — something to fall back 
upon — may possibly be happy in a jog-trot 
fashion. Most of them don't look it. The 
liveliest part of their life is past. They live with 
their eyes behind them. 

Hence, perhaps, the underlying jealousy and 
contempt of the Navy that one hears sometimes 
in the talk of old longshoremen who have never 
come under its spell. 'Ah!' they will say, of a 
bluejacket on leave. 'He'd ha' done better if he'd 
a-stayed at home an' gone 'long steady. What is 
it, the Navy? You'm in and you'm out, an' you 
bain't no for'arder than you was. 'Tisn't no job 
for a man what's got any go in him, being ordered 
about by the likes o' they; and they knows it 
too after they been in it a while; only they'm 
there then. If I had a son growing up I'd see he 
didn't join no Navy. . . .' 

But very likely the son would. 

All sorts of bad I have heard about the Navy, 
over and over again, from men sober and men 
drunk, men argumentative or disappointed, above 
all from men who have done well in it. What 
it used to be like, they were not there to see, and 
they have not, most of them, read such books 



250, ALONGSHORE w 

as Stf# Life in Nelson's Day, The discipline of 
to-day, probably, with its multitude of careful 
regulations, is more irksome, if less terrible, than 
the happy-go-lucky violence of the past, when 
men were put to death for small offences — and 
then they couldn't grumble any more. Changes 
in the service, however great and beneficial in the 
long run, are changes from what men are at home 
in to what they do not know; soft jobs have 
tended of late years to become harder. Sea pay 
has increased less than that of the other services; 
for ordinary seamen it has not increased at all. 
Nothing can remove the fundamental cause of 
grumbling, that neither one and sevenpence a day 
nor any other sum is sufficient for being killed in 
an infernal floating machine by devilish explosives, 
should that happen. It is all very w r ell to die for 
one's country, but if one is to be paid for 
the same, the pay should be adequate; and that 
cannot be. In the end, one begins to think that 
a good deal of the grumbling is not so much at the 
Navy as at life itself with the Navy as scapegoat. 
And yet, in spite of all they say, if I had my 
time over again, I think it is in the Navy I would 
be (I doubtless should soon regret it) ; not for 
wanting to do their routine work, not for wishing 



iv OFFICIAL SUNRISE 251 

to walk the slippery plank of their discipline; but 
rather in order to be one of such a fine set of 
human animals all turned towards a definite pur- 
pose; to be in a ship that knows her course and 
steers by it, full speed ahead, instead of lying 
bound alone in shallows and in miseries; to have 
at any rate the illusion of living faster, harder and 
more effectively than one could otherwise do. For 
just as a fuddle by oneself is a poor affair com- 
pared with a spree in good company — 'when 
you'm all up for it ' — so if life is to be a bit of a 
spree, good company is still needed; and that there 
is in the Navy, with a long tradition and a common 
pride to back it up. 

One day before breakfast we were out mackerel 
hooking roundabout a cruiser that was anchored 
in the bay. Very bulky, black and lifeless she 
lay on the calm sea in the early morning haze. 
Suddenly the guard-call sounded brazenly. Men 
ran about the decks. The guard fell in across 
the quarter-deck. Eight bells struck and the 
bugle sounded Attention! Whereupon, while the 
guard presented arms, and the crew saluted or 
stood at attention facing aft, according to their 
rank, the white ensign fluttered out from its staff 
astern. The ship had awakened. The wide sea 



252 ALONGSHORE nr 

was awakened. It was the hour of official sunrise 
— a comic notion. But it seemed out there, 
beneath the great ironclad, that the sun by some 
vast power had been stayed in his course till then. 
That power of the Navy, not indeed over the 
heavens but over the minds of mankind, acting 
obscurely alongshore, draws men into the service 
at least as surely as the uniform that is usually 
blamed, because youngsters take to it as, and 
for much the same reasons as, birds put on fine 
feathers at the beginning of the mating season. 
Here we have the Navy eye, so to speak. A 
soldier going by in full pipeclayed regimentals, 
very stiff, very tight, very smart, excites only sur- 
prise and laughter: 'Shouldn't I like to see he hae 
to bend down two-double an' pick a peck o' win- 
kles!' But half a dozen bluejackets striding loose- 
knit along the sea-wall. . . . 'Smartish chaps!' 
some one exclaims, and inquires how they are 
doing in the Service. They are splendid full- 
blooded animals, in the sense that to be fine 
animals is what we all desire. And more ; for the 
bluejacket is no longer a sea-labourer. He is a 
specialist at something or other, besides being an 
expert in a special way of life. While talking to 
petty officers one gathers hints of an admirably 



iv NELSON 253 

tolerant, rough and ready tact in the management 
both of the lower ratings and higher ranks, below 
and above them. The growth of intelligence 
in the Navy and the adaptation of the old sea- 
discipline to it has created problems more difficult 
to solve than gun control. Men have feelings 
and prejudices and cussedness. Vitality is stronger 
than cordite. 

In one thing, at all events, longshoremen have 
the pull over Navy chaps. However perfectly 
the latter may be able to bring one craft alongside 
another, they cannot beach boats well on a lee 
shore, and, it seems, never have been able to do 
so. 'My dearest friend/ wrote Nelson as far 
back as 1801 in those sea-sick letters of his to Lady 
Hamilton, 'it blows strong from the westward, 
and is a very dirty day, with a good deal of surf 
on the beach ; but Hardy and Lutton recommended 
my going on shore this morning, as they believe it 
may blow a heavy gale to-morrow. ... I hope 
the morning may be fine; but I have ordered a 
Deal boat, as they understand the beach better 
than ours; and if I cannot land here, I shall go 
to Ramsgate pier, and come to Deal in a carriage. ' 

When, a year or two back, men from H.M.S. 

landed their Admiral on our beach, just where they 



254 ALONGSHORE ar 

were advised not to, and got his back very wet, 
and put him out of temper with the place, a couple 
of us caused something like consternation the 
night afterwards by fetching an officer out of a 
ballroom, hunting him down in jerseys among the 
starch-collared or low-necked dancers, and hour 
and a half after the time for which he had ordered 
a boat to take him to his ship. It was thought 
that the Admiral's wetting .... Admiral's ill- 
tempers are not to be played with. But in point 
of fact, it was only that we were tired of waiting 
so long after midnight for that officer. Across 
the low-tide sand one of us carried him like a 
baby, but head downwards, which is the easiest 
way. He couldn't give us ioa or chokey for dis- 
respect. Moreover, he stood it very well. It was 
when we took a party of lieutenants aboard, and 
over the whiskey and cigarettes they gave us (good 
luck to them — we had rowed hard!) began teasing 
them about their beaching of boats, that unpleasant- 
ness nearly cropped up. They were tender on the 
subject. The Admiral again, I suppose — though 
they didn't say so. On another night at two in the 
morning, we rowed three boat-loads of midshipmen 
three miles to their ship, and neglected beforehand 
to agree between ourselves as to the charge. Or 



iv NAVAL OFFICERS 255 

rather, mine, in their exuberance, rowed me out, as 
nearly as possible smashing the paddles and cap- 
sizing the boat. Thinking it was worth it — and so 
it was at that hour — I charged them half-a-crown 
each, and they paid like lambs. The next man's 
boat-load decided finally to offer him two shillings, 
The third man, who had sweated at his oars with a 
cargo of twelve, obtained a shilling from each with 
difficulty. Doubtless they compared prices after- 
wards. It was perhaps as well for us that the ship 
left next morning. Naval officers are a peculiar 
people, very pleasant when they are pleasant, 
though apt sometimes to try and treat outsiders as 
they can their own men. 

But the Navy chaps, them we know. When 
they come home in numbers, on Christmas or 
Easter leave, they are like a breeze springing up 
on a sultry day. They make things hum, as they 
put it. What does it matter to them how much 
they spend, so long as they have it to spend? 
When it is gone, they must wait till they get 
some more. They raise the scale of generosity 
for the time being. Easy-going as they are, 
however, they can do ceremonies, which is always 
a sign of really corporate life. Behind the coffin 
of a dead bluejacket they marched in order, 



256 ALONGSHORE 



IV 



voluntarily under the command of the senior petty 
officer present (their footsteps had the effect of a 
dead march), and returned in as good order till 
they were dismissed; whereupon with one accord, 
like rabbits, they bolted into the nearest public- 
house. But they had finished their ceremony 
perfectly, nevertheless. Civilians would have 
straggled away. One morning it was observable 
that all the bluejackets on leave were in their best 
jumpers. They had the regulation creases about 
them. Near mid-day the church bells struck up a 
peal. Soon a regular quick tramp of feet was 
heard, and there wheeled round the corner a cab 
hauled by a score of Navy chaps on a rope. 
Inside of the cab one caught sight of a bluejacket 
— very blue in the black cab — and of his bride 
with white flowers. Across the Front they went 
at a quick trot, as if to defy the sea that was soon 
to separate husband and wife; thence round 
another corner to their new home. I heard more 
than one woman say that she would have jumped 
out of the cab; but these were not the wives of 
Navy chaps. We couldn't have done it; we 
should have fallen out half-way, saying, 'I be 
puff-blowedP and perhaps have left the cab 
standing. 



iv A FEW HOURS' LEAVE 257 

When some hundreds came ashore for a few 
hours' leave, a laughing crowd collected upon the 
sea-wall late at night, to watch them shove off to 
their ships. It had been an evening of it. The 
lights of their cutters, steadied by men with poles, 
swayed at the water's edge like big fireflies. The 
complement of each boat was told over almost 
frenziedly. 'Where's So-and-so? Where the 
****** ****'s he got to? Go'n find him. Tell 
'en to hurry up for the Lord's sake!' Language 
on the beach was starlike. Now and again the 
crowd turned, whilst a bluejacket came racing 
down the street, leapt off the wall, and rushed to 
the boats. One man dived overboard twice, 
whether from stimulated depression or from an 
excess of jollity, I do not know. He was rescued, 
a limp bundle, and sat upon. Some had their 
arms round maidens' waists, kissing openly. They 
had been in the town only one evening. People 
talked. But it seemed to me better that the Navy 
chaps should have such a way with them, than 
that the maidens should have been more modest. 
It was a bacchanalia, an outbreak of primal forces 
good to watch, and reassuring in these decorous 
days. Our own beachcombings are odds and 
ends, flotsam and jetsam, to eke out a living. 

S 



258 ALONGSHORE * 

The Navy chaps beachcomb for maidens, the 
means of more life, the future, into which they 
rush light-heartedly. And so the Navy justifies 
its theft of young blood from the longshore. It 
gives it back with usury. 



24. A LEGEND 

Most old places by the sea have their legends and traditions. 
And when they have not, it seems necessary to make legends for 
them; even as the folk of all times have peopled nature with 
half-human beings, calling them gods; or as seamen have given 
to their coasts grim names and tales. Only so seems nature to 
have a meaning for man, when he has given her a portion of his 
humanity. Hereunder is such a legend, for a wild spot on a 
rock-bound shore. — The Legend of the Black Abbey Rock. 

Back in those days there was a man who could 
find no foothold in life. Therefore he took his 
wife to the grey cottage in the combe of the 
Black Abbey Rock, at the western edge of the 
land, hoping always to find peace and something 
that his soul might hold to and have. Twice in 
a day and night the sea came up to the house, 
and twice in a day and night the waters went 
back and left a wilderness of great stones, in the 
midst of which uprose the Black Abbey. It was 
as if a guardian had been set to keep the grey 

259 



260 ALONGSHORE w 

cottage from the inrush of the tides, and around 
it the waves beat so that their spray was blown 
into the combe of the Black Abbey and upon the 
faces of the dark cliffs on either side. In the 
evening when the sun was sinking behind the 
farthest wave in the west, the Black Abbey cast 
a long shadow over the cottage, until its grey stone 
walls and the green-grey lichens upon them were 
black like the Black Abbey and the rocks round- 
about. During many ages continually, the cry of 
the sea had filled the combe. And the gulls 
wheeled round and mewed to the sea for food. 

The man loved the body of his wife, who was 
beautiful, as a lily is beautiful on an altar in a 
dim church. Yet he hated her too, for her soul 
was vast and empty, so that the four winds of 
heaven could not have filled it, and in her eyes 
was nothing. She feared the sea that he loved, 
and that was more beautiful than she was. She 
stayed always in the grey cottage, or wandered, 
and was like light, in the day-long dusk under 
the pine-trees which were as thick as giant moss 
upon the slopes of the combe. When he hated 
her he was sorry, and when he loved her, sorrow 
was the end of it. Two sorrows he took to the 
sea. 






— • . nin l Hiiiiiig 



— . 





The Heavy Reluctant Break of the Ground-swell. 



iv PROMISE AND HOPE 261 

Often he waited among the rocks near the 
Black Abbey, seeking he knew not what. He 
heard the heavy reluctant break of the ground- 
swell, throbs of the earth's heart, and while he 
listened Promise and Hope were borne to him 
on the sound of the sea. 

One night when the north-west wind blew over 
the waters, and a mist of spray arose where waves 
struck the rocks, he saw the lights of a ship. 
And the Rock-Woman came to him, and was 
beside the Black Abbey. Her hair was like fine 
spray that the land-wind blows from the crest of 
the waves when a cloud veils the sun and its light 
is golden and cold; her garment was a swirl of 
foam that reached up to her; her face was like 
still white water before dawn; but her eyes he 
could not see. She looked where the ship battled; 
the strength of her gaze swayed her like desire. 
It seemed that she was what the man had asked 
of the sea, and he yearned for her, and started 
up; whereupon she went from his sight; and a 
laugh, in nowise different from the plash of 
waters, was echoed from the cliffs to the sea, 
from the sea to the cliffs, and back again. A 
breaker washed around his feet. He stumbled 
as he drew back, on one of the boulders that 



262 ALONGSHORE iv 

the tides take up and roll about the shore, and 
fell. 

Whether in dream or not, he was within the 
Black Abbey. Blue and green was the floor of 
it, like the sea ; of black rock were its pillars ; and 
in the roof was darkness. There was no sound 
save the throb and swish of the waters leaping 
against its walls. The man and the Rock-Woman 
were together before the altar; at the head of 
which was written promise; but on the face of it 
was written yearn. Sheen of the sea and sheen 
of the moon swept through the Black Abbey, and 
lingered around its pillars and cornices, and 
flooded its arches. And the light was music; for 
in this place the roaring of the waves is a kind of 
silence. The spirit of the sea, when it is hushed 
before storm, and streaked with smoothness, 
went slowly, like a deep breathing, through the 
Black Abbey. 

The wedding was complete. The Rock- 
Woman called the man to her. Joy lightened 
her face, but when he looked into her eyes, he saw 
there the whelming of a ship. It sank behind 
waves; it lurched high above the great dark 
troughs; white horses hunted it, and frothed 
upon its decks. It staggered like a hero dying. 



iv TWO CHILDREN 263 

Of a sudden its lights went out, and the Black 
Abbey was shaken. The colours that had made 
music, were still, and filled the Abbey like an 
eternal note on some weighty instrument. The 
Rock-Woman was triumphant, but horror over- 
came the man. He put her from him. Darkness 
fell on the Abbey and on the sea, out of which 
came a voice saying: 'Because thy wife is beautiful, 
the two children that she shall bear at a birth 
shall be beautiful; but because her soul is empty, 
the soul of the one child shall be of me and the 
soul of the other child of thee. Yet thou and 
they shall all be mine, because thy soul is mine.' 
In answer to the man, a laughter that was nowise 
different from a plash of waters, hovered about 
the surf. 

When dawn came he was upon the shore. 
Around him was the torn wreckage of a good ship. 
Dead bodies of men were washed up in the day. 

Two children were born, and the woman that 
feared the sea died. The man remained with his 
children in the combe of the Black Abbey; they 
were all he had. One was fair with its mother's 
beauty, but that it had hope and yearning in its 
eyes; the other was dark and its eyes were dark, 
so that whoever looked into them saw far, yet 



264 ALONGSHORE iv 

was baffled. The fair child was tenderfooted in 
the wilderness of rocks. The dark child would 
not be separate from the sea, and cried even in 
the grey cottage which was close by. One was 
afraid when storms blustered up the combe and 
the voice of the sea was loud; but at such times 
the other was happy. 

It happened that one evening when sunshine 
glittered on the shore, the dark child climbed 
upon a spur of the Black Abbey Rock, and 
enticed the fair child to the foot of it. In a little 
while, a storm-swell rolled in from the Atlantic 
and the sunshine faded. A menace of winds 
was heard over the water. Then the dark child 
laughed; and it took up a stone that was washed 
upon the Rock, and it dropped the stone upon 
the fair child, and clapped its hands for happiness. 

Twilight was come. The man remembered 
his wife who had feared the sea; and he cursed 
the dark child whose soul was the soul of the 
Rock-Woman, and killed it. He watched the 
two children lying beneath the Black Abbey. 
Darkness crept along the face of the cliffs. He 
was alone. 

The shadow of the Rock-Woman went past 
the combe. He called, but she would not come 



iv AN END 265 

to him. A company of colours flickered along 
the cliffs, driving the darkness before and leaving 
blackness behind. He besought the Rock- Woman. 
A mysterious light was upon the Black Abbey. 
The moon shone fitfully through the clouds, mock- 
ing the storm and him. And at high tide, three 
great waves swept up the shore, and washed the 
two children away into the west. Then he 
remembered the words of the Rock- Woman: 
'Yet thou and they shall all be mine, because thy 
soul is mine.' 

A laugh, that was plash of waters, grew till it 
drowned the rattle of the surf, and died away in 
the combe. 

Afterwards the man forsook the cottage in the 
combe of the Black Abbey, and returned among 
mankind, hoping to find forgetfulness and some- 
thing that his soul might hold to and have; but 
always he yearned for the sea, and always the 
Rock-Woman haunted him, till he too died. 



V 



267 



25. TWO FISHERS ABROAD 

Mate to a longshore fisherman is not light work 
for one whose early youth has been misspent in 
study. Even Jim, who was bred up to it, has often 
an ache in his bones. While we were hauling the 
hooked mackerel aboard, hand over hand, and 
prices were fair, he said that if we could afford it 
we would have an autumn holiday together. When 
prices fell, and fish were left to rot on the beach, 
he declared that we, being fishermen, of all men 
deserved a holiday. And when the mackerel 
season closed with small profit, then we made up 
our minds to have the holiday, whether we could 
afford it or not. We framed estimates, all of them 
hazy. Jim took golden sovereigns from a place 
of hiding upstairs, and I drew two months' fishing 
pay and a little more besides. 

We strolled about London, and after three or 
269 



270 ALONGSHORE v 

four days of it we happened to see a railway poster 
which brought the Continent within hail. 

'There's very cheap tickets to Boulogne, Jim. 
Shall us go to France?' 

'Had us better to?' 

'Why not?' 

'Upsail, then. Give the order. You'm 
skipper here. How many hundreds of miles is 
it to France herefrom?' 

Jim has sailed a twenty-foot open boat from 
Devon to Kent, has run across Folkestone Bay 
under bare poles in a gale, and fetched the harbour 
amid cheers, but he has hardly yet succeeded in 
realising that France is not an island, or where on 
the face of the globe it is. He did not do 
geography at school, and it doesn't much matter; 
for the coast he knows, he does know. 

Our start was not promising. On the previous 
evening, lounging around a log fire, we had 
smoked cigars, and had drunk red wine, and Jim 
had sung sea-songs. The uncustomary wine, the 
cigars, did it. Jim's face could not lose its 
weathered tan and red, but it was white, white 
underneath. His description of his head is inde- 
scribable. He, a seaman, was very nearly sea-sick 
on the cross-Channel steamer. Upon our third- 



v NOT ALIENS 271 

class week-end tickets was stamped, 'Issued 
subject to the Aliens Immigration Act.' I had 
visions of being herded with exceptionally 
verminous aliens into a big wooden room; of 
trying to convince an East-country inspector of 
human cargoes that Jim's broad Devonian tongue, 
with its modified u, was not foreign English; of 
having to worry our way back to our own Eng- 
land. 'I bain't no alien!' said Jim. But had it 
not been remarked that he singularly resembles a 
Breton fisherman in build and, as if to confirm it, 
had not a London 'busman shouted out to him in 
the Strand in cockney French ? We almost wished 
ourselves back in our own West-country. 

'The fishermen and their families,' so Baedeker 
says of Boulogne, 'occupy a separate quarter, La 
Beurriere, on the W. side of the town, and form 
one-tenth of the population. They partly adhere 
to the picturesque costume of their ancestors, and 
differ somewhat in character and customs from the 
other inhabitants of the town.' It was the fisher- 
folk we hoped to fall in with. For cleanliness' 
sake we chose a grand hotel to sleep in, and forced 
our way to it through a pestering crowd of out- 
porters, interpreters, and touts. 

'Be thic the sort o' thing they does hereabout?' 



272 ALONGSHORE v 

asked Jim, not a little shocked when the chamber- 
maid entered the room while we were half-stripped 
for washing, and requested us, as usual, to write 
down on two little slips of paper our birthplace, 
profession, and so forth, for the benefit of the 
police. I explained to him that French and 
English mock-modesties differ. But how explain 
ourselves to the police? At the moment I could 
not remember whether pecheur meant a fisherman 
and pecheur a sinner, or the other way round; and 
besides, I thought, if the Boulonnais look down on 
fishermen as Devon tradespeople do, we may — as 
common, low fishermen — be requested to move on. 
Also there were my wretched spectacles. Not 
one fisherman in a thousand wears spectacles. But 
how else describe ourselves? I had had some 
experience in Paris of the suspiciousness of the 
French police. There was no knowing what 
scrapes we might get into. The newspapers at 
that time were very full of a spy scare, and 
Boulogne is a garrison town with an arsenal. We 
could not deny that we were a rather extraordinary 
pair. The one, Jim, was dressed in a full fisher- 
man's rig, his sole concession to travel being a 
starched collar, which was completely hidden 
beneath his jersey, and only made him appear to 



v SKIPPERS ALL 273 

have a badly swelled throat. The other one, 
though clothed in respectable navy serge, wore 
a comfortable, unstarched, soft-collared shirt and 
a leathern belt — something between a tramp 
steamer's second mate ashore and a Wild West 
scoundrel. 

However, I remembered that I had upon me 
my certificate of discharge from the ss. Coranian, 
on which my character for conduct and character 
for ability were both stamped 'Very good.' So I 
presented Jim to the police, and incidentally to the 
hotel-keepers, simply as marin — leaving them to 
decide whether he was Monsieur le Capitaine or 
a mere A.B. Myself I put down as marin 
(sea-faring man) et homme de lettres (wearing 
spectacles). 

And they soon made up their minds about us. 
In vain I protested that Jim was my skipper; that 
I worked for him, not he for me. 'No doubt you 
do work,' said an amiable fellow in a cabaret. 'I 
can see very well that your hands are strong and 
hard. But believe that you two are of the same 
occupation, absolutely .... Jamais de la vie! 
Why, you are the two extremities. Your friend 
is a small-built man. You are biggish. You are 
pale and monsieur is very red. Monsieur doesn't 

T 



274 ALONGSHORE v 

speak a word of French, but you, you speak it — 
comme un Anglais bien instruit!' 

I was, it appeared, a large boat-owner visiting 
Boulogne with one of rny captains in order to pick 
up ideas for my fishing-fleet. Boulogne, they 
hastened to explain to me, with all a Frenchman's 
charming pride in his own town, is the greatest 
fishing port in France, and as a market superior 
to Billingsgate. But the herring season was so far 
a total failure. 

We left the police papers upon the bedroom 
table. With my most imposing air (what Jim 
calls my 'hell-about-it gyte') I strode downstairs, 
across the clattering hall, and out to dinner. Jim 
followed on tip-toe. 

Boulogne that Saturday night seemed to be 
composed of three things: dark water and ships' 
masts and scattered lights — yellow little lights, 
haphazard spots in the mist, with little drab people 
and gawky two-wheeled carts crawling about 
among them. In fishing ports, when the season 
is a failure, the very houses seem to droop. We 
felt, I think, Boulogne's mysterious connexion by 
water with all the far hazy world; saw in mind 
the lighthouses of other Continents and the loom 
of their coasts; and then, looking the other way, 



v MADAME BONNE 275 

it seemed as if the town had been erected in a 
squalid jumble around the bowed old woman who 
sits hugging her chestnut roaster at the end of the 
Pont Marguet. It was the crowded masts — or 
was it the lonely steam syrens? — that made us 
breathe quicker and step out. So much adventur- 
ing forth, so many hopes, are stored up in a 
harbour. 

Cheap meals are dearer in Boulogne than 
in Paris. We could find nothing less than 
'Dejeuner et Diner a 2fr. 25/ Where were 
the 'Diners a ifr. 15 et ifr. 25' of the Latin 
Quarter? After much peeping through steamy 
windows, we turned into the restaurant of one 
Madame Bonne, who advertised dinner in a grande 
salle a manger upstairs at the 2fr. 25. 

(Jim grew quite fond of Madame Bonne. 'We 
fed chez Madame Bun's/ and We, we!' were the 
two phrases he took home to his wife; just to 
show we had really been among the Frenchies.) 

Madame was laying her own dinner at one of 
the little tables beside her zinc bar. We begged, 
therefore, to be excused the grande salle a manger; 
to be given instead a fry of fish and a salad down- 
stairs. Immediately after us there entered the bar 
a thin, pimpled, sallow, lithe, shabby-smart young 



2 76 ALONGSHORE 

man, in whose bearing deference and effrontery 
were very subtly mingled. 

'You do not remember me. I spoke you out- 
side the station. I could have much aided you.' 
He pointed to the word Interpreter on his worn 
peak-cap. 

'We didn't want you then. We got on all 
right without. But take a glass of wine with us 
now. Madame, three d'mis'tiers of white wine, 
please.' 

'You can speak French! But you are not 
here in Paris. They do not understand demisetiers. 
You must buy in the bottle of a litre. I dine 
here every evening. Listen, I can show you all 
Boulogne — all the best Boulogne — the Boulogne 
the English love to see.' 

He turned to Jim. 'You wish — you — vous 
voulez rigoler — go on the bust, you say — is it not ?' 

'Yes,' replied Jim blankly. 

'He doesn't understand you,' I explained. 
'Besides, we wish to go on the bust mildly. 
Doucement! Monsieur is father of a family.' 

'Ah ! he has one, two little ones, three perhaps?' 

'He's had a dozen.' 

'Madame Bonne, Madame Bonne!' sang out 
the interpreter. She emerged from her cupboard 



v ' QUELLE HOMME !' 277 

of a kitchen. 'This gentleman here has twelve 
children.' 

'How many?' exclaimed stout Madame Bonne. 
'Twelve children? Impossible!' 

That's right,' I said. 'He's had twelve.' 

'Quel hommeF She smoothed his stubby hair 
like a mother. 'Quel homme! Je vais lui donner 
du bon poisson, vite, vite! 9 

Jim smiled, and wriggled like a dog that knows 
it is being talked about. The interpreter drank 
deep to all his family. 

'I've got,' I said, 'a sister whose husband is 
one of nineteen.' 

'What! Nineteen! Of the same wife?' 

'Yes. And the uncle of my brother-in-law 
has had twenty-one. ' 

Madame Bonne cast up her hands. I had but 
told the truth; had labelled myself liar; a liar 
so competent that the interpreter troubled us no 
more. 

After dinner Jim despatched postcards to all 
his family, smoked some black French cigarettes, 
was very ill indeed, and went to bed. 

During the night we were awakened. People 
were chattering and shouting below. Carts rattled 
over the setts. Silly-sounding little horns tootled 



278 ALONGSHORE v 

up the quay. The locomotives in the roadway 
whistled, and luggage trunks bumped. Syrens 
shrieked. 'I thought last night,' Jim called across 
the room, 'as these here Frenchies was nice quiet 
people. Do 'em waken up at night? Didn' us 
ought to be out an' about if there's ort to see? 
/ can't sleep.' Whereupon he fell a-snoring. 

When we did get up, Boulogne was all alive. 
The harbour was crowded with fishing craft. 
Whilst crossing the bridge we caught sight of a 
steam-drifter deeply laden with herrings. 

'My senses !' cried Jim. 'Lookse, there's fish 
for 'ee!' 

'What do you think now of our last winter's 
twenty-two-thousand catch ?' 

'Why, that weren't nort 't all. This here's 
the thing. Look! they'm all over the deck, fore 
an' aft. But ours was a good catch all the same, 
after the rate.' 

Jim was for moving on down the quay to look 
at the other drifters. 'Let's find breakfast,' I 
said, 'and come back here directly afterwards. 
Aren't you hungry?' 

'Don't know as I be. Look sharp, then. — 
Aye ! I could eat half a dozen o' they herrings. 
Ask somebody w'er this is onusual like.' 



fl FISH AND FISHWIVES 279 

'The season's going to begin at last,' they 
answered. 'Fine weather's what we want. Fine 
weather! La saison commence !' 

Almost the whole of the north-eastern side of 
Boulogne Harbour, which is but a narrow river 
dredged, was giving up to the fishing-boats. Boats, 
I say. . . . To us who fish in little open sailing 
craft they were ships, bigger than Brixham trawl- 
ers. The steam-drifters (many of them bearing a 
Scottish shipbuilder's nameplate) were so large 
and laden that we mistook them for fish-carriers, 
come in from a fleet outside. Their catches, 
hundreds of thousands of herrings, overflowed 
from the great wooden tanks which are placed on 
either side the boats, amidships, and spread all 
over the decks in glittering floods marbled with 
pink herring-blood. Nets, it seemed, were stowed 
below. Jim was delighted to see that some of the 
little craft, much like our own, had caught more 
in proportion to their size than had the steamers. 

Dignified fishwives, black shawls upon their 
heads, were sitting behind their stalls in the market- 
house. Their names are painted on the wall above 
them — Louise, Caroline, Jeanne, and the rest. 
Laid out carefully before them were several sorts 
of grotesque creatures, devil-fish, monks, and so 



280 ALONGSHORE v 

forth, which are not considered good eating in 
England, where a fish is judged as much by its 
appearance and reputed habits as by its flavour. 
In the wholesale market a fat little auctioneer 
behind a barrier chirped bids, for all the world 
like a sparrow in shelter from storm. The bustle 
was tremendous. But how orderly after the hustle, 
the cursing confusion of Billingsgate! 

Roe, scales, slime, and blood of herrings make 
a fishy mess; with coal-dust added they make a 
filthy mess. The quayside was coated with it 
(quick urchins darted in among the crowd to 
snatch up crushed and dirty fish) ; the boats were 
crusted with it, and so were the men's brown 
overalls. At first, for eyes accustomed to navy- 
blue jerseys and ears more used to British cuss- 
words, the Boulonnais fishermen seemed nimble 
manikins, as all alike as a flock of sheep, their 
dialect a monkeys' gibberish; but when the sun- 
light caught the herring-scales it gave jewels to 
their beards, gems to their ears, and to the tips of 
their noses. Wives, daughters, and sweethearts, 
bringing food and steaming hot soup to the quay- 
side; family breakfast-parties seated around the 
long loaves aboardship; laughter, kisses, hearty 
slaps on the back, a box on the ears soundly given 



v SORTING FISH 281 

and well taken, completed their transformation into 
men. 

La saison commencait ! Carts — like costers' 
carts stretched to twice their size — were deliver- 
ing nets, coal, and ice to the boats, and taking 
away fish. Knee-deep in herrings, men scooped 
them up into baskets which were handed up- 
over the quay-edge. The baskets were tipped 
into measures, which in turn were tipped into 
barrels on the carts. Here and there a trawler 
was discharging. Men with bare red hands, and 
women even, sorted the icy fish. We passed a 
heap containing tons of dog-fish, another of great 
thornbacks, and another of conger eels. Iridescent 
blunt-snouted little weevers, whose taste is as good 
as their spines are poisonous, were being laid 
gently into shallow baskets. 'They don't waste 
nort here, seems so,' remarked Jim with admira- 
tion. 'At home us grinds they weevers under- 
neath our feet' 

A very fat old man who had no use in his legs 
steered himself along the quay on a small three- 
wheeled cart drawn by three dogs, one harnessed 
beneath, and the others to the ends, of the axle. 
Two dogs which were at liberty insulted them. 
They broke loose. They fought, leaving the old 



282 ALONGSHORE v 

man stranded. They won. Laughing spectators 
led back to the old man his yapping victorious 
steeds; but work was not interrupted, for in the 
big catch there was more interest than in the 
little farce. 

Hardly could I entice Jim from one sight to 
another, from one boat to the next. He smiled 
at the crews, and, looking up a moment, they 
grinned back. Then he spoke in English, and 
they shook their heads, or called out, 'Yes? 
Anglish? No speak it.' 

'Hanged if they bain't nice civil chaps !' was 
Jim's conclusion. 

'Good Lord ! There's a mess !' he shouted 
when we came alongside a drifter, which I think 
was Notre Dame de Boulogne, She had fouled her 
nets with those of another craft. A hydraulic 
crane was dragging them out of her in a tangle 
that was all loose ends. A score of brown men 
on one hawser, and a thin horse on another, were 
tearing the nets apart. Pieces of yarn and of 
rope lay all over the road. 

'Do you often get in a mess like this?' I 
inquired. 

'Only too often!' was the reply. 

'Yes,' said Jim. 'This here stiff twine, what 



v AN ACCIDENT 283 

they has their nets of, fouls worse'n our cotton. 
But 'tis cheaper. Why don' 'em turn their nets 
up an' down for a bit, an' look an' see the lay o'it? 
'Twould save time in the end — an' gear. They 
don't seem to trouble how they breaks it abroad.' 

'It belongs to a company I expect.' 

'Aye! that there's it. You don't take the 
same care when it belongs to a company, n'eet 
when 'tis a gen'leman owner's, as you do when 
the gear belongs to the likes o' ourselves. 'Tisn't 
natural to.' 

Suddenly there was a shout. The crane was 
hastily lowered. People ran to peer over the 
quayside. An animal sound arose. Then work 
went on as before. 

We saw on the after-deck a man whose hand 
was crushed into a blue and red squash, from 
which hung shreds of skin. They poured petroleum 
over the wound and bound it up with dirty rag. 
'An' that's the way o'it, I tell thee,' said Jim. 
'But I'd like to be in one o' these here boats, after 
that.' 

We walked to the lighthouse, which stands on 
the eastern of the two jetties which have been flung 
far into the sea to form an entrance for the harbour. 
Women, each with a basket slung on her back, 



284 ALONGSHORE v 

were there to watch their menfolk in and out, to 
give them their first greetings and last farewells. 
Fussy steam-tugs towed as many as three drifters 
up and down the strait channel. Hawsers parted. 
Collisions were narrowly averted. The crews of 
twenty or thirty men clustered up in the bows, 
singing themselves to sea, or else made sail in 
haste to catch the first wind outside. Behind us, 
over Boulogne, dark clouds hung low, and the 
smoke from the harbour writhed up to the dome 
of Notre Dame, so placidly, so protectively 
dominating the town. The sun came out. It 
shone on the golden crosses and sacred statuettes 
which top the topmasts of the sailing vessels. 
May St. Jacques, the fishers' saint, and Notre 
Dame de Bon Secours aid them ! The sky looked 
wild, the sun stormy. A sou'westerly breeze 
sprang up quietly, like an enemy from ambush. 
It bellied the sails in the offing. It lifted the 
clouds off the sea. It revealed for a minute or 
two the white cliffs of England. 

'Shall us stay out our tickets, Jim/ I asked, 
'and not go home till Tuesday?' 

'Had us better to?' 

'Can if you like, if we've got enough money.' 

We counted our money. 



v WOMEN AND KIDS 285 

'Well, I do like to see these here women about. 
They works here like men. They don't try to do 
the lady like they does at home, which they can't 
do if they wants to. They helps their husbands. 
An' they wears pretty caps, too. An' they don't 
giggle an' screech nuther. They'm well behaved 
here; nice an' quiet like, for all they eyes 'ee 
sometimes. When I gets back I shall tell the oP 
'oman her'll hae to help me — come down to the 
boats an' work instead o' biding in house.' 

'Who'll take care of the kids?' 

'Who takes care o'em here?' 

'They haven't got many — two or three at most. 
They don't want 'em.' 

l I do. The more the merrier, I say. But I 
should like to know what they carries in those 
baskets on their backs, an' w'er the slings don't 
hurt their chests. An' I'd ask 'em, too, if I could 
speak the lingo. — Here, my dear! I wants to 
speak to 'ee.' 

'Thee't better not to, Jim.' 

'Can't a fellow speak to any girl he wants to 
in this here country? Her's gone now, an' her 
smiled to me.' 

At home Jim can frolic with very nearly whom 
he will. He has a way with him. 'Funny oP 



286 ALONGSHORE v 

man!' is all they say. But in Boulogne he had to 
be reminded that Jealous Continentals are apt to 
use a knife. We did not want une affaire 
passionnelle. His innocent desire to give his arm 
to the sweetheart of a young workman all but 
broke up one merry party we had formed. At a 
quayside cabaret, where the girl who served us 
spoke English, he bubbled over with satisfaction. 
'Don't her laugh pretty!' he said. 

A pale frowning young man came in and sat 
down beside her. 'What have those blackguards 
[polissons'] been saying?' I heard him ask. 

'Oh! they have spoken very, very politely, 
avec une propriete parfaite/ she said. 

If Jim had understood. . . . Thenceforward 
she spoke in French only, and I had to translate it 
to him. 

But he rapidly developed a sign-language of his 
own. At 'Le Gai Marin' a number of men in light 
blue trousers filed into the cafe. One fine, stout 
fellow came directly up to Jim and shook hands. 

'Anglish?' 

'Yes — from the West Country." 

'I don't belong to Boulogne — no, no ! I come 
from Calvados, I do,' he said pointedly, as if he 
felt in Boulogne much as we had felt in London. 



v THE OUT-PORTERS 287 

After talking awhile, he asked us what luck we 
had had with our fishing. I interpreted. 

'Us an't done nort,' said Jim, with a gesture 
so expressive that the big man of Calvados slapped 
him on the back. 'Better catches, my friend! 
De la bonne chance, mon gars!' Then he rejoined 
his mates. 

After a morning on the quay, we were sitting 
and chatting over our cafe-cognac. Two men 
came in and greeted Mme. Bonne. One was tall, 
blue-eyed, and fair; the other was a drooping, sad 
man. His head, eyelids, moustache, and shoulders 
drooped; his knees, as one might say, drooped. 

'You are Anglish?' inquired the fair man. 
'I speak it small. My father was Irish, but I have 
never been there. You will drink with us?' 

'No, you with us.' 

'Very well, messieurs.' 

He produced a large card — Felix Dupont, Com- 
missionaire — explaining that he was out-porter at 
the Gare Maritime. 

We ordered beer, shook hands many times, 
were prodigiously polite, bowed, shared cigarettes. 
The Irish-Frenchman who had partially lost his 
sight after fever in Martinique — ( Les colonies fran- 
caises sont aff reuses!' — chatted to Jim. I had to 



2 88 ALONGSHORE v 

talk to the drooping man, but, on account of the 
quid of tobacco which filled up his mouth, I could 
not understand one mumbled word in six; and his 
deafness, also from fever in Martinique, prevented 
him from hearing more than one sentence in three 
of my French — d'un Anglais bien instrult. We 
had therefore to treat one another avec la plus 
haute consideration — and more beer. They made 
the mechanical piano play 'God save the King,' 
and we put several pennies into the slot for 
the 'Marseillaise,' to which we doffed our caps. 
The farewells were affecting. Vive Ventente 
cordiale! 

Later in the afternoon, from the hotel window, 
we saw the drooping man supporting the Irish- 
Frenchman across the Pont Marguet. 'Lookse!' 
cried Jim. 'Lookse! Who'd ever have thought 
thic washy French beer would have made 'en 
like that there? Must have weak heads here- 
about.' 

And, later still, we fell across the drooping man 
alone. He was sadder than ever, and most re- 
proachful. He shifted his quid, but all of his 
mumblings I could catch was, 'Est tres malade! 
Very, very ill !' 

Next day, on our way to the boat, two porters 



v A LONGISH AU REVIOR 289 

ran out from the station to embrace us. Jim 
began to show fight; then burst into laughter; 
for it was only the Irish-Frenchman and the 
drooping man. 

'You were very bad yesterday?' I asked. 

'Never mind. You're going? What a pity! 
Bon voyage, messieurs! A good crossing. Au 
revoirf Mais oui — au revoir, re-voir, n y est-ce 
pasf 

'Au revoir; c y 'est qaP we said. 

But he died soon afterwards, the Irish-French- 
man, of sleeping rough in cold weather. 

As the steamer was making Folkstone harbour, 
one of the crew, who had been entertaining us with 
cross-Channel gossip, drew us aside: 'Better get 
up among the first-class, else you'll be kept back 
with these rotten aliens.' It was with conscious 
pride that we hurried for'ard, leaving the aliens to 
be sorted out abaft the barrier; with a sense of 
possession that we stepped on an English quay; 
with I know not what in our minds that we took 
train for our own West-country. 

And a few days afterwards again, we sorrowed 
— not with the facile distant emotion of newspaper 
readers — when we learnt that five men of Notre 
Dame de Boulogne had been washed overboard in 

u 



2 9 o ALONGSHORE v 

a gale, and four drowned. We had talked and 
laughed with them when their nets were so 
fouled up. 

"Tis the way o' it,' said Jim. 

'C'est gal' said I. 



26. A HERRING HAUL IN A FRENCH 
STEAM-DRIFTER 

'But suppose,' said the skipper of the Marie- 
Marthe, — 'suppose we do not catch enough her- 
rings to-night, and remain at sea two nights, or 
three? Vous serez contents? You will not 
mind?' 

We were standing in a group on the grimy 
edge of the Quai Gambetta at Boulogne. All 
around was the hubbub of that busiest of fishing 
ports. The harbour was crowded with craft, the 
foreground thick with their swaying masts, and 
the air with their smoke, which rose lazily in 
clouds, then scudded off raggedly in the windy 
upper air. Below us, alongside the quay, lay the 
Marie-Mar the, her decks black with a mixture of 
coal-dust and herring-slime. We were silent — 
trying to make up our minds. I translated the 
skipper's question into Jim's better ear, repeated 

291 



292 ALONGSHORE v 

it, and added, in the vain hope of forcing a 
decision, What about it, then?' 

'Do as you'm minded, 1 he repeated. 'You'm 
skipper here, not me. Three or four days to sea 
is a long time when you'm on a holiday. Bit too 
much like work, ain't it? Might nearly so well 
be at home' herring-catching in one of our own 
little packets. 'Tisn't as if us had brought any 
oV clothes : us'll spoil these here. I'm ready 'nuff, 
if thee's give the word. Thic craft there' — point- 
ing to a laden sailing drifter that was being towed 
up harbour — 'her's got plenty o' herrings, seems 
so; an' they an't been out two nights, not unless 
they was out in that nor'westerly gale. 'Twas 
thic perty li'l maid to the cafe put this here mazed 
turn-out into thy head. What did 'ee say to each 
other? I wish I could pick up the lingo. . . . 
Be 'ee going or not? They'm waiting for thy 
answer, looks so. We'm stuck up here like two 
poops !' 

The skipper, a snug little man in the brown 
jumper of French fishermen, was eyeing us steadily, 
without a sign of persuasion either way. The 
patron of 'Le Bon Pecheur,' who had brought us 
from his cafe of that name to the ship, sniffed and 
twisted on his heel, as if to say, 'Well, I've done 



v THE ' MARIE-MARTHE ' 293 

my best.' A round-faced fisherman, whom we 
afterwards came to know as Voncle Jean, grinned 
all over his face, from his cropped stubbly hair 
to his stubbly unshaven chin. The armateur — 
whether owner of the Marie-Marthe or managing 
director of a company to whom she belonged, I 
could not rightly make out — appeared politely 
impatient to get on with business. Jim's face was 
scrupulously blank. A high iron cart beside us 
finished shooting pounded ice down one of the 
Marie-Marthe's smaller hatchways. (Ice certainly 
did not look like one night at sea.) 'Us bain't 
'bliged to go, be us?' said Jim. We were not, of 
course; but a decision we had to make then and 
there. The whole of the past two days had been 
leading up to that. When our money ran short, so 
that we were unable, in any case, to work along the 
coast to Brest and cross thence for a final holiday 
flutter in Plymouth, I had suggested instead a trip 
in a French fishing-boat. We had argued, too, 
over and over again, exactly how they manage to 
haul in drift-nets with steam-winches; and only 
seeing it done could prove one or the other of us 
right. Then, mainly for the sake of talking, I 
had inquired at 'Le Bon Pecheur' of the merry, 
pleasant-eyed maid whose hands were red and 



294 ALONGSHORE * 

cracked with glass-washing and table-swabbing, if 
it were possible to get out in a Boulogne fishing- 
boat, and she had replied, 'Oh, it is quite easy, 
m'sieur, the easiest thing in the world. I will ask 
the patron at once, this moment.' And she did. 
We had refused the chance of a sailing-drifter, 
because, we said, it was too like our own craft. 
We had trailed the length of the quay in the wake 
of the patron. Now the decision had to be made, 
and — it was plain — by that decision we were to be 
weighed up, either as cafe-chatterers or as English 
fishermen desirous of seeing French methods. 
Drifters, steam and sail, with much blowing of 
hooters, were already going out of harbour. The 
Marie-Marthe was taking in her coal. A trip 
aboard her would be fine to talk about upon the 
beach at home; but, on the other hand, if it 
turned out a failure, a mere dull waste of holiday, 
that also I was safe to hear about at home. Hence 
the difficulty, the responsibility, of deciding. When 
would one hear the end of it? 

The skipper repeated his question very plainly. 
'Suppose we do not return for two or three 
days?' 

After all, it ill became a couple of men with 
blue jerseys under their coats to shy at three days 



v SAUSAGES 295 

away, or four. { Ca n } fait rienP I replied 
boldly. 'We will come.' 

'You will have le mat de mer, perhaps?' 

'Not likely! We are fishermen ourselves,' I 
protested, knowing very well that steamers, unlike 
small boats, do sometimes make me sea-sick. 

'It will be very cold. Btaucoup de vent — 
much, much wind outside — and from the east.' 

'Never mind. It will not be so cold aboard 
your steamship as it is trying to sleep at night in 
our little open boats. Shall we bring our food 
with us ?' 

'There is bread and coffee aboard, and fish 
when we catch it. Bring some eau-de-vie for 
your coffee, and buy yourselves something at the 
char cut erle. . . .' 

Then truly did my heart sink within me. The 
charcuterie — how on earth was I to choose among 
the multitudinous sausages of all sizes and shapes, 
cooked, uncooked, and half-cooked, that festoon 
a charcutier' s shop? It was worse than trying to 
pick out the words one understood from the 
fishermen's dialect. Despairingly I turned to 
the patron of 'Le Bon Pecheur' : 'If it pleases 
you, monsieur, have the kindness to buy us what 
we need, and we will pay you willingly what you 



296 ALONGSHORE v 

charge. Meanwhile, we will fetch from our 
lodgings some more clothes.' 

'Bien, m'sieur. Almost immediately I go to 
prepare your equipage.' 

Our equipage ! That was the end of deciding 
to start, which, as all longshoremen know, is the 
toughest part of fishing. We returned to the 
cafe; 'thic perty li'l maid' braved the charcutier; 
and when we went along the quay with coats and 
the equipage ( a bottle of red wine, two bottles of 
eau-de-vie, and a paper packet of garlicky sliced 
sausages) under our arms, it was much like going 
drifting at home. The basket, even, had its 
handle broken on one side, for all the world 
like our baskets at home. 'So that's it, is it?' 
exclaimed Jim, in reference to nothing at all; and 
I laughed, as one laughs when a weight (in this 
case, of sausages) is off one's mind. L'oncle Jean 
greeted us. 'You are not coming!' he cried, 
fishing out a small copper box from underneath 
his blouse. 'Then make a cigarette — Belgian 
tobacco — tres bon — ver' goot, ver' sheap — it has 
not paid duty.' After that welcome, it was, as 
it were, our own ship that we boarded, puffing 
smuggled cigarettes. 

By noon the last cart-load of coal had been 



FRIGHTS FOR ONCE 297 

shot into the bunkers. Moorings were cast off. 
The big barked mizzen-sail was hoisted aft — to 
steady the ship while steaming, I suppose, and 
afterwards to keep her head to the nets. The 
skipper climbed up to the bridge, put an arm 
through the wheel-house window, and gave three 
blasts on the steam-hooter. With the devil-may- 
care confidence of fishing skippers on entering 
and leaving harbour, he signalled 'Full steam 
ahead.' The Marie-Mar the woke up. 

'Can us go up on the bridge,' asked Jim, 'an' 
sing out "Good-bye!" to they there maidens 
what waits on the pier-head wi' their baskets?' 

Up we went, thereby attaching ourselves to 
the bridge for the rest of the trip; — and we had 
imagined ourselves taking part in the jollity of 
the crew, who, when their boat is putting to sea, 
gather together, a brown crowd upon the fore- 
peak, loll over the gunwale, and as often as not 
sing themselves out of harbour. 'Up here,' I 
said to Jim, 'we'm nort more nor less than 
frights [freights, i.e. passengers]. Hast ever 
been a fright in a drifter before?' 

'Aye!' he replied, 'so us be. 'Tis a gert 
thing of a drifter. What did 'ee say they carries? 
Twenty hands? But,' he added, unbuttoning his 



298 ALONGSHORE v 

coat — with some pride, I fancied — and pulling his 
jersey down around him against the cold, 'though 
us be on the bridge, us bain't starch-collar hellers, 
after that.' 

And being on the bridge did not make so 
much difference as it probably would have done 
in an English ship. There seemed to be more 
camaraderie aboard the Marie-Mar the. The man 
at the wheel smoked cigarettes and chatted. The 
captain strolled about his ship, lending a hand 
where it was wanted. He was distinguishable 
only by his look of solidness without agility — the 
figure of a man who has done hard work in his 
day and finished with it, — and by his Icelandic 
dog's-hair mittens, which, without fingers, but 
with three fin-like thumbs each, reminded one of 
dog's-fishes' heads. Who was mate of the Marie- 
Marthe we never discovered; the work went on 
but so few commands were given. 

Outside harbour the sea was dotted with steam 
and sailing craft, going to and returning late from 
the herring ground. Away to the north'ard the 
cross-channel steamer, high in her upperworks, 
shallow in draught, was rolling herself awash. 
(Without doubt the watch on deck were swear- 
ing under their breath as they handed the enamelled 



v COLD IDLENESS 299 

tin basins round and pocketed the tips.) We 
were still within shelter of Cape Griz Nez and 
the Wimereux coast, but even there the easterly 
wind was blowing the water into a greenish-white 
lather, as a strong breeze will do when there is 
not room for a sea to get up. We steamed away 
in a sou'westerly direction, past the long outer 
breakwater and the high-walled fishing village of 
Le Portel. Had they waited a little longer to 
wash down the deck, the sea would have done it 
for them. 

'You are cold?' inquired I'oncle Jean coming 
up the ladder. 

'We are very content,' we said. 

As a matter of fact, the keen wind was blowing 
through us: we found the difference that night 
between being at sea with nothing to do and 
having some work, if only baling out, with which 
to warm oneself. 'Why,' we asked, 'is she built 
so high in the bows?' 

'Ah ! you would see,' said Vouch Jean, 'if you 
came with us to Iceland in the summer. It is 
almost always a tempest and great seas there.' 

The Marie-Mar the, one of the largest steam 
fishing-boats out of Boulogne, is about the size of 
a small ocean-going tramp, but much better built 



300 ALONGSHORE 

and engined. Very high in the bows and well cut 
away beneath her overhanging stern — she is lively 
on the seas; but amidships she is so low that the 
water came over the gunwale all night. Like 
most of the steamers which frequent the narrow 
crowded harbour of Boulogne (including the cross- 
channel boats) she has a bow-rudder for going in 
stern first. The engines and deckhouse — on top 
of which, in front of the funnel, is the wheelhouse 
and chartroom — are placed well aft in order to 
leave plenty of room on deck for fishing opera- 
tions. Looking for'ard up the deck are first the 
small hatchway of the cable-hold; then the cable's 
steam-capstan, — an English patent, with its neat 
little flat engine on the top of it; and then the 
wide hatchway of the net-hold, extending nearly 
the breadth of the deck. Between that and the 
foremast are other holds for ice, buoys, and fish, 
and very for'ard is the hatchway to the fore- 
castle. Along either side of the deck, against 
the bulwarks and about as high, are the herring- 
trunks — that is to say, large, long wooden boxes, 
divided into compartments into which the herrings 
are shaken and shovelled. 'Last year,' said the 
skipper, 'we had an American aboard here who 
wanted to take photographs. He got dancing 



v FISHING-GROUNDS 301 

and climbing about while they were hauling the 
nets in, and fell head first among the herrings. 
Mon dieu, what a mess!' 

After we had steamed for nearly two hours, 
crossing the nets of several other drifters which 
were riding lumpily to it outside of us, small 
quantities of coffee were brought round in very 
large and rather battered tin mugs. 'Or would 
you rather have beer?' they asked. 'There is a 
barrel of beer on deck for any one to drink who 
likes. Very good beer in this boat' We were 
come to the fishing ground, about twenty miles to 
the south-west of Boulogne and ten miles or so 
from the high scarred sand-hills of the coast. It 
was the Boulogne home-ground, as one might say, 
and the fishery on it lasts at its height only for a 
week or ten days at the beginning of November, 
after which the herrings move farther west, and 
are followed as far as Havre. 'And west of 
Havre?' I inquired. 

'Don't know,' said the man who was talking 
to us. 'I have never fished there.' 

A wooden roller about a couple of yards long 
was rigged up on the port gunwale alongside the 
net-hold. The Marie-Marthe's engines were put 
as slowly as possible astern, for the wind, now 



302 ALONGSHORE v 

increasing to half a gale, was strong enough to 
carry her clear of her own nets. Then the shoot- 
ing of the net began. The end of the cable, made 
fast to a big wooden log, was passed over the bow 
stanchions. The net itself came up out of the 
hold with lanyards, two or three fathoms long 
and several fathoms apart, fixed to the corked 
head-rope that runs along the top of the nets. 
As the net went over the roller into the sea, the 
lanyards were held, passed along for'ard, and 
made fast with clove-hitches to the cable. Mid- 
way between the net lanyards other lanyards, with 
black keg-buoys attached to them, were also bent 
on to the cable. Every kilometre was marked by 
a tall numbered buoy, painted in red and white 
stripes and carrying a flag. Whereas in our small 
drifters the buoy lanyards are made fast to the 
head-rope itself, and the head-rope takes the strain 
of the nets; in the steam-drifter the lanyards of 
the buoys above, and of the head-rope below, were 
both made fast to the stout cable, and the cable 
took all the strain between boat and nets. Down 
in the sea, therefore, was a vertical wall of net six 
fathoms [twelve yards] high, its foot-rope near 
the bottom, its head-rope about seven fathoms 
beneath the surface; above that a row of net 



v SHOOTING THE NETS 303 

lanyards hanging from the cable, which ran 
through mid-water over the head-rope and parallel 
to it; above the cable again a row of buoy lan- 
yards, and on the top of the water a line of buoys 
reaching very far out of sight. 

So long a cable must needs be made in many 
pieces, spliced together. As each splice came up 
out of the cable-hold the ship's boy called its 
number, being answered from the fore-peak, whilst 
the ship's dog gave a joyful bark, and gripping 
the splice in its teeth was carried growling right 
up to the bows. Two men, one on the head-rope 
and one on the foot, dragged the net out of its 
hold; two men likewise shot it out over the roller, 
working a furious pace with the regular move- 
ments of gymnasts at exercise, — red-faced, sweat- 
ing gymnasts of a grotesque shape, in their brown 
jumpers, clumsy sea-boots, and short, enormously 
wide oilskin trousers. It was as if they were 
running fast and far, not with legs but with arms. 
When they were breathless, others edged in near 
them, and, as it were, pounced into their places. 
Nothing stopped for a moment. Nothing could 
stop. So heavy a vessel, blowing all the time 
away from the nets, could not be held still, and 
such an immense fleet of nets could not be moved 



304 ALONGSHORE * 

in the water. If a hitch occurred either in shoot- 
ing the nets, paying out the cable, or in bending 
on the lanyards, there was no slowing down. 
Somebody, frequently the skipper, had to rush in 
and help them go still faster. Else the net and 
cable would have dragged them overboard. 

Relay after relay of men was used up. They 
came away, drank a mug of beer, puffed awhile, 
then back to work. The sun went down crimson 
in a hard east-windy sky, lighting up the crests of 
the waves so that it seemed as if the sea was 
already tinged with pink herring blood. And 
still the net was going over the side. Its flap- 
flap on the water, the slower whack of each buoy, 
the splice cries, and the barking of the dog, 
together with the whistling of the wind, the heavy 
plunging of the ship, and occasionally the savage 
hiss of a comber as it raced past us into the 
burning sunset, — all made a raucous music very 
mysteriously beautiful on the wide water, a dirge 
for the slaughter of herrings, hundreds of thou- 
sands of little deaths, that was to take place out 
there that night. 

The skipper left the deck for the bridge; and 
suddenly, blindingly, with powerful electric lamps 
and reflectors, the whole ship was lighted up 



v JIM'S LAMENTATION 305 

brighter, it seemed, than daylight. Drifters around 
us followed suit, till the herring ground was like 
a gay illuminated town. It was just after five in 
the afternoon. 'Be 'em never going to stop 
shooting thic net?' asked Jim. 'How much ever 
do 'em carry, for goodness sake?' Six thousand 
metres, they told us, — nearly four miles. On 
hearing which, Jim gave voice to the small drifts- 
man's lamentation: 'No wonder us don't catch 
the herrings us used to, When these here things 
sweeps the Channel wi' their miles o' net, an' 
catches 'em all up afore they comes to us in our 
bay! It don't give the fish a chance. I pitys 
'em, I do. God's sakes, what a sight o' herrings 
must come into these seas for to stand it ! An' if 
these here fellows could use fine nets like ours — - 
which they can't for their heavy work — instead o* 
their coarse thick-ply yarn, they'd catch three 
thousand where they catches a thousand now. Us 
got the 'vantage o'em there, I reckon. An' lucky 
for the likes o'us 'tis so.' 

The last of the nets went over the side; an 
additional length of cable, for riding to, was paid 
out and made fast; and in the twinkling of an 
eye the deck was deserted, except by those who 
carried pannikins of food from the galley aft to 

X 



3 o6 ALONGSHORE 

the forecastle. We, too, were called for our 
supper. 

In the narrow chart-room, the skipper and two 
fishermen were wedged bolt upright, along the 
wallseat. Like three gigantic mechanical dolls 
they looked, all in loose brown jumpers; and the 
resemblance of the place to a toy-shop was not 
diminished by the sacred statuettes in a glass- 
fronted box shaped like a doll's-house, which 
hung above their heads between the aneroid 
barometer and a clock. Upon the brass-bound 
flap-table, underneath a very modern electric glow- 
lamp, stood a basin of hot, savoury stew, into 
which, primitively, they fished for titbits and 
dipped their hunks of bread. 'Shipboard cus- 
toms,' the skipper apologised. 'Ours also afloat,' 
we said, 'only we cannot have hot stew at sea.' 
They would not share our wine and charcuterie, 
saying, 'The ship's beer and stew are better.' 
And so they were. 

'Beer for us ! A votre sante, messieurs/ said 
the skipper, nodding. 

A la votre, et a la picket De la bonne chance 
— bonne prise/' 

Jim smiled his compliments: he would have 
been more emphatic had he understood that on 



LE SALON A CHAUFFER 307 

the fulfilment of those toasts depended our getting 
back to port the next day. 

When we had eaten, the skipper told us there 
were a couple of empty berths where we could 
turn in, if and when we wished. 'Let me be 
called at eleven,' he said, and, still like a huge 
marionette, he disappeared down a trap-door in 
tihe floor. 

The rest of the night, till eleven, we spent in 
getting chilled through on deck, or warming our- 
selves in a dark hole, the floor of which was a 
grating over the stoke-hole, and one wall the 
smoke-stack itself. I could not find out its name, 
but on calling it le salon a chauffer every one under- 
stood. Mittens and wet clothes hung there to 
dry, and there the watch — two men, relieved every 
two hours — spent most of their time. The air 
within was hot and foul; without, on deck, it was 
fresh and deadly cold. We had our choice. The 
best thing to do was to sit on the iron doorstep 
with one's head craned out into the cool air and as 
much of one's body as possible poked backwards 
into the salon a chauffer. Riding to nets at night 
in a small boat and light breeze, it looks as if the 
whole sea is flowing past in haste to plunge over 
the edge of the world. There is an intimacy then 



308 ALONGSHORE v 

about the black, whispering waters. One is almost 
in them. But aboard the steam-drifter, with the 
great waves of the gale to which the easterly wind 
had increased, advancing out of the darkness, ris- 
ing high for a moment in the light of the ship and 
hurtling forward into darkness again, it seemed as 
if the world itself was being tossed into space, and 
nothing was steady, nothing fixed, except the eyes 
with which one gazed. 

Uoncle Jean brought us a whole packet of the 
Belgian tobacco, and asked us if we would not 
like to go to bed. 'Not yet,' we answered. 'We 
will stay and keep an eye on the whiting lines that 
the boy has put out.' 

'Ah!' said Voncle Jean, 'you ought to be here 
for a few days. We take every chance of sleeping 
that we can get. Much work, much work!' 

But the whiting and the red gurnard were not 
on the feed. We stayed chatting in the salon a 
chancer. Every two hours, for the benefit of each 
watch, we had to give an account of where we 
came from and how we fished at home ; and I had 
to explain that I was not Jim's boat-owner, but 
his mate, who worked under him as any other 
fisherman's mate might do, for more kicks than 
ha'pence. They plainly pitied us longshoremen; 



ADMIRALTIES 309 

whereupon we stopped pretty promptly wasting 
pity on ourselves. They described to us their 
own year's fishing (the Marie-Mar the is convert- 
ible into an otter-trawler) off France, off the west 
coast of Ireland, and in the Iceland waters. That 
voyage, though it is hard work and very cold, 
they prefer to bobbing in and out of their own 
port. Payment, they said, for the men is a 
regular wage of a hundred francs a month and 
half a franc on each thousand, whether of ship's 
earnings or of profits I could not be certain; for 
their French was as difficult to an Englishman as 
our Devon talk would be to a Frenchman who 
had learnt his English among Cockneys. One 
younger man, not of the stout fisherman build, 
told us about service in the French navy (he 
agreed perfectly with the British bluejacket who 
voiced the lower deck's sentiments by saying, 
'An admiralty's a ****** rogue that you can't 
bring to book!'), and he mentioned the Steinheil 
case, then just concluded. 'Do you think your- 
self that she was guilty?' I asked. 

( Je n'sais pas. Qu'importe? Figure to your- 
self, she was a pretty widow and had rich friends. 
. . . Money is What one wants.' 

'In England, too. If you are poor, keep clear 



310 ALONGSHORE v 

of the police, but if you are rich, they are ex- 
cellent good fellows, the admiration of the world. 
If I were to get drunk in a jersey and old sea- 
trousers, I should be run in, and next day a 
magistrate would lecture me on the evils of in- 
temperance; but if I happened to be in dress 
clothes, I should tell the policeman to call me 
a cab, and he would help me in and wish me 
"Good-night, sir!" respectfully; and next day I 
should only be lectured on the virtues of various 
liver pills.' 

'It is as bad here; even worse, perhaps,' the 
French fisherman said. 'But you have more 
teetotalism in England, and more drunkenness 
than we have. Your English teetotalism — ah!' 
he went on in a tone of great compassion, lifting 
up his hands. 'What an unnatural thing! No 
wonder you are often drunk, you Englishmen !' 

Anyhow he understood, that man, the great 
and grand spirit of cussedness. 'Won't you turn 
in now?' he suggested. 'I am going to call the 
next watch.' 

'No, thank you,' we replied with decision. 
'We can sleep to-morrow. We are much too 
interested.' 

Which was half a lie. The fact is, after we 



v SLEEP-WRECKERS 311 

had come down from supping with the skipper, 
Jim had said, 'Did 'ee see they there crawlers up 
there what I've heard 'ee talk about seeing to 
France? Scores o'em, up an' down the wall 
they was.' 

'If they've got 'em there, in the chart-room, 
they'll be swarming in the forecastle. Better to 
stay here to-night. To-morrow night, if we don't 
get home, we shall be too tired to care.' 

'/ bain't going down there to sleep, not wi' 
they things.' 

And we didn't; and were hot and cold and 
desperately sleepy. About midnight, however, I 
went up after some eau-de-vie, and called Jim. 

'Is that all you saw? Those aren't not 

what you thought they were. They'm only wood- 
beetles. And they and you have done us out 
of our sleep !' 

'Aye,' said Jim now, 'an' I'd have liked to ha' 
gone down 'long wi' 'em an' had a yarn, an' 
p'raps a sing-song if they was minded. . . .' 

'So'dl.' 

'Well?' 

'Well!' 

Then, like the Babes in the Wood, propped up 
against each other, we fell asleep on the settle. 



312 ALONGSHORE v 

A subdued grinding of machinery woke us 
about two in the morning. The ship was notice- 
ably steadier. Away to the north-east Etaples 
light flashed into the clouds, — we had drifted a 
long way south-west. On deck, under the bright 
electric light, every man of the crew was turned 
out. They had started hauling in the nets. The 
grinding noise was that of the steam-capstan, a 
strong thing on the strain. And such was the 
discipline of the crew that they also seemed a 
single strong thing greatly on the strain. All 
around us, under the peacefully bobbing lights of 
other ships, the same work was going on as 
swiftly as men could do it, but without haste or 
hurry. 

As the cable came in over the bows two men 
unbent the lanyards, letting those of the net drop 
back into the sea and throwing the buoys on one 
side. Thence the cable travelled along deck, 
underneath the net, to the revolving steam- 
capstan, took three turns round it, and descended 
into the net-hold, where a man coiled it with very 
great care. 

For the net, a long, thin roller the length of 
the herring-trunks had been rigged up on the 
port gunwale; and in the centre of the deck a 



HAULING IN 313 

couple of rollers close together, parallel to that 
on the gunwale and to each other, reached aft 
from the foremast to the net-hold. Forming a 
right angle with these there was a fourth and 
shorter roller on the edge of the net-hatchway. 
The whole piece of gear was like nothing so 
much as a skeleton printing-press, for dealing 
with nets instead of rolls of paper. 

The net, freed from the cable by men in the 
bows, floated alongside, a few feet under water, 
with the herrings, not enclosed within it, but, as 
in all drift-nets, stuck through the meshes and 
held fast there by their gills and fins. Two men 
— one on the head-rope and one on the foot — 
dragged it inboard over the gunwale roller. Two 
other men stood behind them to help haul and 
shake. Stretched wide and taut, the net passed 
over the herring-trunks to the two central rollers 
on the other side of which stood six men in a line, 
their brown oilskin-clad figures very upright and 
still, their gloved hands in ceaseless activity; for 
it was their work to shake out the herrings while 
they were crossing above the herring-trunks, toss- 
ing the net like a blanket, and to pick out those 
on the upper side of the net while it was going 
over the rollers. The net itself fell at their feet 



3 i4 ALONGSHORE 

took a half turn so that the under side came 
uppermost, and passed over the short roller into 
the hold, with its head-rope now the right way 
round for shooting next time. Down in the 
net-hold men laid it evenly from end to end, 
and picked out the few tightly meshed herrings 
that remained. 

We watched with some anxiety, for on the 
catch depended our getting home, and, as Jim 
said, "Tisn't the sort o' thing you wants to look 
at two nights running when you an't got none of 
the work o'it to do.' At first the nets were nearly 
empty; then a few bunches of herrings shone in 
the water and rose glittering over the gunwale; 
and then two or three nets were hauled in fairly 
full. None of them, as will sometimes happen, 
came aboard solid with fish and ripping them- 
selves to pieces. There was no need to slow 
down the capstan. 

'They herrings shakes out easier,' remarked 
Jim, 'when they'm fresh-caught than they do 
when you got to pick 'em out ashore, like us, 
after they'm dead an' stiff. Lord! if they had 
to pick each one o'em out ashore, they'd never 
do it. How long did they say they was hauling 
in? Six or eight hours? Twelve hours if 'tis 



v HERRINGS 315 

a big catch? If they had to haul in by hand, 
like us, wi'out thic cable an' capstan to take the 
strain, they'd be twelve days an' then not finish. 
They only got the weight o' the fish, where the 
likes o'us, in our little craft, has the weight o' 
the fish an' nets an' all; an' our nets bain't no 
smaller though they'm fewer. I reckon, thee's 
know, they works longer'n us, an' they sticks at 
it, too, but they don't hae to work so heavy after 
that. But there, us wouldn't be out in a gale 
like this here. Us couldn't. What a scuffle an' 
shackle must be sometimes !' 

All of which was true enough. 

The crew made a complete rotation, and still 
the net and cable were coming in. In the trunks 
the piles of herrings grew higher; they were 
shovelled off the decks; men trod among them 
and upon them. The seas that the Marte-Marthe 
took aboard ran out of the scuppers red with 
blood and dirty with slime and roe. A stream 
of herring-scales sparkled in the seas that raced 
past. With hoarse cries and chuckles, the birds 
swooped down to the feast. Occasionally the 
men on the forepeak cried out too, when the 
capstan had to be stopped an instant because a 
lanyard was jammed on the cable. Buoy after 



3 i6 ( ALONGSHORE v 

buoy clattered across deck. The dog's interest 
failed him. But the end was nowhere near. 

I think we snoozed, though always I could 
hear the grinding of the capstan. 

Dawn came with a darkening of the misty 
waters to indigo, and a greyness in the eastern 
sky. Soon the heavens lit up. The combers 
shone with a greenish glow. Etaples light went 
out; and it seemed afterwards that the sea was a 
lonelier place. The loom of the coast was hardly 
visible. 

The hauling-in continued. 

Some of the drifters within sight, which car- 
ried fewer nets or had started hauling earlier, 
steamed and sailed off home. A sailing-drifter 
near us brought up several of her nets foul. She 
had to help herself as best she could. 

Our own nets were coming in without inter- 
ruption, some of them brilliant with fish in the 
early morning daylight, others empty for fathoms 
at a stretch. The gale increased in force — wildish 
weather; but the steam-capstan went on hauling 
the net in as steadily as ever. The Marie-Mar the 
plunged and rolled; a greater number of herrings 
were washed out of the nets before they could be 
got inboard. That was all. 



v NETS DAMAGED 317 

At eight o'clock the crew was still hauling, and 
at nine. We could not now even glimpse the 
sandy coast. It became necessary to shift herrings 
from trunk to trunk. The fish were coming in 
rather thicker. There were still enough nets left 
for the catch to turn out a large one. 

The hauling-in no longer presented itself to 
our minds as an episode of drifting: it was a day's 
work in itself. 

At last, about ten o'clock, the skipper spoke 
down to the engine-room, 'Put her ahead gently 
— as gently as possible.' He took the wheel him- 
self in order to steady the ship. 'It is necessary,' 
he explained, 'to steam up to the last few nets. 
They have not hold enough on the water to drag 
the ship towards them.' 

Trie three end nets had been torn out of their 
head-ropes, which came aboard with only rags of 
the yarn hanging from them. 'They have fouled 
the bottom,' said the skipper. 'In weather like 
this what can one expect?' 

Knowing too well what the loss of nets may 
mean to longshoremen, we were sympathetic; but 
the French driftsmen, they did not care. 'It is 
nothing, this: nothing at all unusual. Besides, 
our Government makes half of our losses good 



3 1 8- ALONGSHORE v 

when ships cut across the nets or bad weather 
destroys them.' 

'Anyhow,' said we, still feeling that the loss of 
nets is a miserable job, 'you have got a catch.' 
The trunks were almost full of dying and soiled 
herrings. 

'A catch!' snorted the skipper; 'a very; 
middling catch! It is not more than eighty 
thousand.' (Which was, in fact, the number in 
round figures.) 'A good catch is nearer three 
hundred thousand. I have seen these decks so piled 
with herrings that you could not walk on them.' 

'Full speed ahead,' he signalled to the engine- 
room, giving the course to the helmsman. 'I am 
going to run under shelter of the land. It is 
farther, but I do not wish the catch washed over- 
board. Bad weather, this is — the worst of all 
winds for us — beastly bad weather ! Good ! here 
is your breakfast.' 

They brought us a tin of mackerel chunks, 
with potatoes baked in butter, which we could not 
eat, for the air of the salon a chauffer had taken 
away our appetites. Nearer land, owing to shoal 
water or tide-rips, both swell and shop were 
higher than ever. We saw then, without going 
so far as Iceland, the use of the Marie-Marthe's 



v JIM'S TRIUMPH 319 

high bows. Buoyant as she was on the water, 
she dipped her head, her decks were almost con- 
tinuously a-wash, spray flew over her funnel, and 
just outside Boulogne harbour a sea went clean 
through her from stem to stern. 

Still at full speed, we raced into harbour 
The engines were reversed, then stopped. The 
hawsers were taken ashore by waiting boats. We 
were home. 

At 'Le Bon Pecheur' they ran towards us and 
shook our hands — heaven knows why! 'Vous 
etes contents?' they cried. 

'We are more than content,' we answered. 

When we returned to the harbour after lunch 
the Marie-Mar the was already gone out of port, 
into the easterly gale. That night, and every 
night till the end of the herring season, fair and 
foul, the immense labour we had witnessed was to 
be done all over again. On the quay Jim made 
his great discovery. He stopped dead, like a man 
suddenly inspired. 'Lookse here!' he shouted 
'Lookse here ! They gert steam-drifters, wi' 
their three hunderd thousand to a haul, don't 
bring in so many herrings after the rate, according 
to their size an' length o' net, as us do in our 
little twenty-foot craft, when us catches twenty 



320 ALONGSHORE v 

or twenty-five thousand. No, they don't — not 
when you comes to reckon it out! For all they 
got the capital, an' they gert ships, an' steam 
power, an' us an't got no capital to speak of nor 
nort, they an't beat us eet! 

'I wonder w'er they'm catching ort at home. 
. . . An' us an't got the nets boated eet in our ol' 
craft! When did 'ee say us was going back? 
T'morrow? 

But from that moment, really, we were home- 
ward bound. 



1909-ia 



APPENDIX 

SMALL HOLDINGS ON THE SEA 

It seems to have escaped general notice that a state of 
things has arisen round the coast almost exactly parallel 
to hat which the Small Holdings Acts 'are designed to 
remedy on land. The small fisherman, owning his own 
boars and gear, corresponds very nearly with the small 
holder or peasant proprietor. And in view of the supreme 
importance to any maritime nation, let alone England, 
of possessing a numerous and hardy seafaring population 
— an importance attested over and over again by naval 
history — the need of encouraging and fostering the small 
fisheries is no less urgent than the much-debated land 
problem. 

For some time, except where local conditions are 
specially favourable or private help has been forthcoming, 
the small fisherman has been subjected to a process of 
crushing out, and it is difficult to see how that process 
can be stayed. The raising of the standards of comfort 
and schooling has, of itself, made young men dis- 
inclined to enter so laborious a profession. At the same 
time, it must be remembered that fishermen are a breed 
to themselves, and breeds of men, once they die out, 

321 Y 



322 ALONGSHORE 

cannot be revived at will. It is useless to try and dose 
dead men or dead traditions. 

Adopt modern methods, say some. ... It is precisely 
modern methods and modern conditions which have 
hitherto gone all against the small fisherman. Capital 
is required ; which he does not possess ; and there- 
fore, relatively, each improvement in method leaves him 
further astern than ever. Moreover, his very independ- 
ence makes him excessively reluctant to take up capital 
for business purposes. 

Steamboats, steam gear, refrigerating apparatuses, and 
the quick marketing of fish are all costly. Steam has 
given amazing prosperity to the great fishing ports, but 
at the expense (to the nation) of turning independent 
fishermen into wage-paid servants of companies. Fewer 
fisher-families are supported by the same number of fish 
caught. The big ports can take care of themselves; they 
have the means to do so. What calls for attention is the 
plight of the small ports, where harbourage is bad; of the 
places where fishing craft have to be brought ashore in 
foul weather; and, above all, of the many small fisheries 
from lee shores, where there is no anchorage and every 
craft has to be beached. There, steam is in any case 
barred, on account of weight. 

Auxiliary motors are proving a success in sailing 
trawlers and large drifters, for though such boats do not 
catch so many fish as the large steamers, they have much 
less capital to pay on, and they save their markets in calm 
weather or against head winds as other craft cannot 
possibly do under sails alone. 

If motors can be adapted to beach fishing-boats, in 
which handiness ashore is every bit as essential as sea- 



APPENDIX 323 

worthiness afloat, the area of fishing operations will be 
increased, time wasted in getting to the fishing-grounds 
will be diminished, quick marketing of fish will be 
facilitated, and the immense fatigues of fishing, which 
wear out strong men early, will largely be avoided. In 
a word, the small fisherman will be in an altogether better 
position to compete with the big companies, and fishing 
will offer a better prospect to young, enterprising men. 
Furthermore, a motor installation, costing up to fifty 
pounds, would not, as a rule, be beyond the means of a 
working fisherman who had been able to save or other- 
wise gain money enough to buy a boat and fleet of nets 
or trawl. His cherished independence would be preserved. 
That being so, it may be useful to describe shortly an 
experimental motor-boat which has been built by Mr. 
W. J. Hodge, of Dartmouth, for Bob and Tom Woolley 
and myself, for service at Sidmouth, where the difficulties 
of a shifting beach are further complicated by a total absence 
of shelter and the need in stormy weather of hauling all the 
boats up over a high sea-wall. For a long time it was said 
that motor-boats would be impossible on Sidmouth and 
similar beaches, owing to their weight and the liability of 
damaging the propeller. The few motor-boats at present 
in use on beaches are mostly, in fact, of the ordinary 
harbour type, sometimes more heavily built to stand the 
knocking about, and they require several men to handle 
them safely ashore. Our problem was, therefore, to get 
a new type of boat for general purposes — towing, fishing, 
and passenger work — which should be seaworthy, and at 
the same time more manageable on a beach. (The 
expense of several men hauling a boat up and down shore 
may easily exceed the cost of the petrol consumed afloat.) 



3 2 4 ALONGSHORE 

Although we only brought the Puffin home last spring, 
we have had Tier long enough to prove that she is not 
only quite seaworthy, but is perfectly manageable ashore. 
In the latter respect she has exceeded our expectations. 
Two or three men can launch her, one man on a capstan 
can haul her up, if the beach is not too steep. 

The boat — 17 ft. 6 in. long, by 5 ft. 6 in. beam, by 
3 ft. deep — is clinker built of elm, and double-ended, in 
order that waves may not flop aboard over her stern when 
she is being launched or beached. The main keel, the 
point which differs most from ordinary construction, 
instead of ending up short at the propeller, or running 
above it into the stern-post, continues aft in one piece 
underneath the propeller, till, curving upwards, it joins 
the bottom of the stern-post; while a stout secondary 
keel, into which the after-ends of the lower strakes are 
rabbeted, runs from the main keel, over the propeller, and 
into the stern-post higher up. Thus the propeller is 
protected by the whole strength of the keel, and the boat 
can be shoved upon the greasy ways down which she is 
launched, instead of having to be lifted upon them. 
Buoyancy tanks, a fire extinguisher, a sail and oars are 
fitted for emergencies. Twelve people, the Board of 
Trade limit for uncertificated power boats, can be carried, 
and in the stern, with the side-seats out, there is room for 
three or four drift-nets. 

The engine — a 4 in. bore by 4 in. stroke, single 
cylinder "Colonial" by Smart and Brown, well under 2 
cwt., developing 4-5 brake horse power, and driving a 
two-bladed reversible propeller — is placed amidships. At 
rest or up to half speed the boat lies on an even keel. 
Then the propeller is partly out of the water and thrashes 



APPENDIX 325 

somewhat, but the small draught of a foot only is of great 
advantage in shoving off and running ashore. At over 
half speed, the bow rises, the stern squats (i.e. sucks 
down), the draught increases to over two feet astern, 
and then the propeller has plenty of water to work in. 
Why the boat is so speedy we don't exactly know, neither, 
apparently, does her builder. He would promise us only 
five miles an hour; we hoped for six miles an hour. As 
a matter of fact, we get on a calm sea seven miles an 
hour, with the engine running at six to seven hundred 
revolutions a minute, and can do upwards of nine. The 
day we brought her home, with no experience of motors 
beyond a couple of trips in Dartmouth river, she did 
thirty-five miles in five working hours. She will tow a 
twenty-two-foot drifter, laden with nets and ballast, at 
six miles an hour (she undertakes to tow fishing-boats, 
fisherman-owned, at cost price of running), and has also 
towed three racing dinghies the twelve miles to Exmouth 
pier in two hours. All of which is more than satisfactory. 
I have gone rather fully into constructional details 
because, though there are many small improvements we 
could now make, the Puffin does seem in general design 
— thanks very largely to her builder and the stout little 
engine — to have solved the problem of handling motor- 
boats on beaches. Sooner or later the questions of 
marketing fish and of middleman's profits will have to be 
tackled thoroughly. Meanwhile, motor fishing-boats of 
this type offer some chance, at all events, of arresting the 
otherwise almost hopeless, and wholly deplorable decline 
in small fishing. 



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